Mobile services surge for ACS

Advanced Computer Software has said that it is seeing a burgeoning demand for mobile services from the health and social care markets.

Posting its annual results, the company said that demand for mobile user licence orders for its iNurse community nursing products were up a whopping 200% to over 13,000 users.

Vin Muria, ACS chief executive, told EHI that she expected to see strong continued demand on mobile, predicting “a further 100% growth in the coming year."

ACS has partnered with Orange and Vodafone to offered bundled mobile services packages, including airtime and iNurse suite ranging from basic activity recording to full patient record access.

The company also announced its first win in community healthcare at Medway – as a “direct result of NPFIT shortcomings." Muria said that the community market had previously been closed to ACS.

Overall, ACS reported revenue growth up 10% to £98.2m and pre-tax profits of £21.2m, up 13% on 2011.

ACS said other highlights of the year included building a position in the new NHS 111 market and a “strong contribution from cross-selling cloud solutions”, including a £17m contract with Northern Ireland Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety.

Muria said: “Mobile working, shared services and cloud enablement are three key areas where our expertise assists our public and private sector customers to unlock efficiencies within their organisations.”

She said that there had been an explosion of interest in Cloud enabling services from local authorities and NHS trusts, partly driven by cuts in capital budgets and “recognition of the need to invest to save”.

The ACS chief executive added: “Despite a developing environment we posted strong growth.” Managed services provided the strongest area of growth for the company, up 16% in the past year.