Accenture adds four new firms to LSP team

Accenture, local service provider (LSP) for the North East and Eastern regions of the NHS in England, has added four further technology providers to its LSP ticket, signing deals with Cognos, EMC Documentum, First DataBank Europe and Informatica.

In December 2003 Accenture won two LSP deals from the National Programme for IT to design, deliver and operate integrated local patient record applications and systems for the North East and Eastern regions valued at £1.1bn and £973m respectively.

The four sub-contractor deals announced today follow the award of sub-contracts to Microsoft, Liquidlogic and The Phoenix Partnership in November 2004. In June the same year Accenture signed an agreement with iSOFT to be its provider of core clinical and administration applications.

The new agreement with Cognos will see the firm provide ReportNet, a Web services architecture-based reporting tool, which will provide management and administrative staff a range of reports to help them better manage performance. The tool should help users identify disease trends, assess bed availability and examine waiting lists more closely.

First DataBank Europe will provide Accenture with its Multilex Drug Data File, which offers clinicians prescribing and dispensing guidance together with clinical decision support. The drug database software, which is already incorporated into many clinical systems in use in the UK, warns of potential adverse events at the point of care, including drug-drug interactions, sensitivities or allergies, drug doubling and contraindications.

EMC Documentum will supply Accenture with its platform of content management services, providing medical professionals with rapid access to a wide range of content and documents, ranging from doctors’ notes and scanned letters to MRI images, X-rays, white papers and research material.

Informatica, meanwhile, will supply its PowerCenter data integration platform to help the NHS manage patient care data analysis through integrated electronic care records. This will ensure that all patient details are accessible and up-to-date wherever patients seek treatment.

Accenture says that the data integration platform supplied will help provide faster and easier access to the various different legacy operational systems that track patient data. In addition the integration platform will automate the complex data transformations required to move data between different systems.

“These agreements illustrate our continued advances toward delivering an integrated care records service,” said Ken Lacey, global managing partner of Accenture’s Health & Life Sciences practice. “Ultimately, this means helping professionals across the NHS access their patients’ electronic medical histories, which will support them in providing better healthcare for patients."

No details were made available on the duration and value of any of the four contracts signed.