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The National Health Service is building a procurement framework for IT services that should be available to the entire organisation and should mimic what Google built for the Central Government with G-Cloud.
NHS CIO Will Smart says this is just the beginning and that more procurement frameworks are in the works. He also said that this will allow the institution to strike better deals, but also allow local organisations to offer better services.
"You will see us doing more NHS-wide procurement frameworks," Smart began. "We will use the commercial scale of the NHS to strike the best possible deal with vendors, but allow local organisations pull off the most appropriate solution. And well do that at a core technology level."
The skeleton of the system is already up and running. It’s far from a complete product, with lots of work still to be done, but the first steps have been taken. It’s called the Health Systems Support Framework (HSSF), and Smart believes it will bring balance between national and local buyers.
"The HSSF is a bit like the G-Cloud environment within wider government frameworks that have the key vendors there with the right terms conditions available for local organisations. Its about striking that balance between national buying power versus local."
"Lot 1 of the HSSF will be launched later in July and is specifically designed for electronic patient record (ERP) systems."
The NHS was one of the biggest victims of the WannaCry ransomware, which hit the organisation in spring 2017. |
