Accenture has announced that it has signed agreements with Microsoft, Liquidlogic and The Phoenix Partnership to provide technology solutions for the North-east and Eastern regions of English NHS, under the National Programme for IT. Accenture is the local service provider for the North-east and Eastern regions, two of the five English NHS regions covered by the NHS IT modernisation programme. The agreement with The Phoenix Partnership covers the provision of an alternative primary care solution for GPs. This will be made available to practices needing an upgrade of their practice systems ahead of the core clinical and administrative solution, Lorenzo, supplied by iSOFT, becoming available. A spokesperson for Accenture declined to provide E-Health Insider with details of when the solution will be made available. In addition to providing the alternative primary care systems for the two regions The Phoenix Partnership will also supply software for Accenture’s child health and community systems solution. Liquidlogic will provide Accenture with its application to manage the single assessment process for elderly people. This tool will be used to help ensure that the provision of care to the elderly is coordinated across health and social care agency boundaries and tailored to the needs of each individual. The agreement with Microsoft, which builds on the global alliance with Accenture, will provide a range of core Enterprise products, including SQL Server 2000, Windows Server 2003 and BizTalk Server 2004. The core solution provided by iSOFT is built and runs on a Microsoft .NET platform and technology According to Accenture Microsoft’s involvement in the NHS IT modernisation project in the north east and eastern clusters will lead to the creation of one of the world’s largest Microsoft based server-farms. Commenting on the agreements Ken Lacey, global managing partner of Accenture’s Health and Life Sciences practice said: “These agreements illustrate our continued progress towards delivering an integrated care records service,” Lacey added: “This is another step toward our goal of helping the NHS improve healthcare services for people in the north east and eastern regions of England. Ultimately, this means helping professionals across the NHS safely access their patients’ electronic medical histories.” Accenture was awarded two long-term contracts in December 2004 – £1,099 million for the North-east and £934m for Eastern region to design, deliver and operate integrated local patient record applications and systems for the two regions as part of the NPfIT.
