Computer Sciences Corporation has signed a framework agreement with NHS Connecting for Health to supply TPP’s SystmOne under the GP Systems of Choice initiative. SystmOne has also been approved as meeting CfH’s standards for a hosted solution.
The signing of the framework agreement with CfH marks the end of a long period of negotiations with CSC over GPSoC. The deal has been delayed by CfH’s wider contract renegotiations with the local service provider for the North, Midlands and East of England.
The agreement means TPP’s SystmOne can can now become more generally available to GP practices across England through the GPSoC initiative, which is designed to enable GPs to have a choice of system.
Six other GP IT suppliers, EMIS, INPS, iSoft, Microtest, Healthy Software and Seetec, signed their GPSoC agreements in 2007 – although one supplier, Seetec, has now withdrawn from the market.
CfH has also announced that the framework agreement awarded in August 2007 to a new entrant to the market, Waveform Solution, has been terminated.
SystmOne’s approval as a hosted solution makes it the second IT system to achieve GPSoC accreditation for its hosted services, following approval for INPS’s Vision system in March.
In April, the Department of Health and the BMA’s General Practitioner Committee agreed that PCTs should be given to discretion to pay component four of the IM&T directed enhanced service to practices using a hosted system on 31 March 2009, if it was due to achieve hosting to CfH standards.
Under GPSoC, CfH provides central funding for annual software licences and upgrades and suppliers are rewarded for meeting national IT requirements through a series of grading levels.
TPP’s SystmOne is a level 2 system, hosted to CfH standards. EMIS LV is a level 3 system because it also meets CfH requirements for GP2GP record transfer, and INPS’s Vision system is a level 4 system because it meets hosting requirements as well as being GP2GP compliant.
Prices published for supply of TPP’s SystmOne under GPSoC show that the annual cost of a software licence for SystmOne will be £5,931 compared to £5,592 for Microtest, £4,997 for iSoft, £4681 for INPS and £3427 for EMIS.