Three more PACS collaborations formed

Three more trust collaborations have been formed to tender for picture archiving and communications systems ahead of the end of national PACS contracts next year.

Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust and Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases NHS Foundation Trust have lodged one joint-tender.

East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, Western Sussex Hospitals Trusts, Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and the Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust are working on a second joint procurement, although the trusts plan to execute private contracts.

And University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and the Birmingham Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust are working on a joint procurement that may be used by two further trusts.

Royal United Hospital Bath and the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases were recipients of PACS from GE Healthcare under the National Programme for IT in the NHS – delivered by local service provider CSC. This contract expires in June 2013.

The trusts’ tender in the Official Journal of the European Union http://www.publictenders.net/tender/132336 says they are now looking for a supply and management contract.

The notice says they want a supplier to keep systems updated over a period of five years to “ensure that the technology and functionality are kept at the leading edge.”

It also says they want a supplier that can interface the new system with current systems and operate across different specialties with “high standards of resilience and performance.”

Unlike most other Southern trusts, East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust avoided the national programme’s contracts and implemented both PACS and RIS from Agfa.

Although it is now involved n a large collaborative tender, the tender notice http://www.publictenders.net/tender/127008 says each of the trusts involved intend to execute private contracts.

Two of the other national contracts for PACS will also end in June 2013 – those delivering systems to the North East and East, where Accenture is the local service provider, deploying Agfa systems, and the contract for the North West and West, for which CSC is also responsible.

The contract for London will expire a year later in 2014. The collaboration formed in Brimingham is seeking to replace a shared CSC imaging management system and PACS and to procure a long-term archive.

The joint contract may be worth up to £7m over five years, while two other trusts – Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and the Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust – may also join the collaboration.

The Birmingham tender http://www.publictenders.net/tender/132620 says the trusts believe that sharing the infrastructure for the information management system, PACS and archive may “provide cost benefits and easier system management and maintenance.”