An alliance of seven UK and Irish healthcare software vendors and implementers has been formed to offer NHS trusts a one-stop shop for best of breed clinical solutions.
3C Healthcare Partnership says it can offer NHS trusts a suite of integrated, proven clinical solutions and direct contact with clinical system suppliers. It also says the partnership has already started to respond to procurements issued by NHS trusts.
The members of the partnership are: IMS Maxims; JAC, providing pharmacy and medicines management; in4tek, providing community systems; Euroking Miracle, offering maternity; Centrom, offering consulting and system integration; Bluestar Systems, offering opthalmology and RFID; and Capex Health for implementation.
Paul Cooper, the UK general manager of IMS Maxims, the firm behind the initiative, told E-Health-Insider: “This partnership has come together in response to the Additional Supply Capability and Capacity (ASCC) framework catalogue.
“We are a limited company responding to procurement opportunities, including European Journal adverts.” 3C Healthcare Partnership is a registered company and a wholly owned subsidiary of IMS Maxims.
“The intention is that 3C could sign contracts with trusts, but it would be a thin veneer that would pass the business directly on to the constituent organisations,” Cooper added.
He said the central idea of 3C Healthcare Partnership is that members can offer trusts a complete solution based on best-of-breed software, in a way no single company could. “The key is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
However, he said the partnership wanted to make sure that trusts could maintain the benefits of a direct relationship with clinical software vendors.
Cooper confirmed that the partnership was not exclusive and that there “may be instances where members feel it more appropriate to bid alone."
He added that another key aspect of the partnership was to make use of current industry standards to provide trusts with interoperability between the products on offer.
“We all use similar web-based technology and all use standards,” said Cooper. “For a trust it should mean that they are purchasing a single solution rather than having to deal with integrating systems from multiple suppliers.”
He added that the incremental development approach offered by 3C Healthcare Partnership offered a pragmatic way to get the benefit of new systems without risking the potential disruption of a big bang implementation. “That’s the way the NHS has made progress on IT for the past 20 years or more,” he noted.
To show prospective NHS customers how their products can link together in an integrated solution, the 3C Healthcare Partnership is planning to create a demonstration suite in one of the member organisations by year end.
Cooper said that initially the partnership will just look at opportunities in the UK, and that feedback from trusts has so far been positive.
“Local service providers are providing solutions through sub-contractors who don’t always have direct contact with the NHS customer. 3C would ensure the software suppliers have direct contact with the customers, with the service organisations providing support, rather than the other way around.”
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