Innovation loss a cost in large contracts

The head of GE Healthcare Health Information Management in Europe has said that the decision to award contracts for England’s NHS National Programme for IT to just a handful of clinical software providers will prove to be at the expense of competition and innovation.

Speaking on an industry panel at last week’s European Commission eHealth Europe 2006 conference, Juergen Reyinger, general manager of GE Healthcare Information Management Technologies EMEA, said that he would have liked to see smaller contracts awarded to more firms. Reyinger also indicated that the programme may experience further delays yet.

However, he also made clear his enthusiasm for the project and conviction that it will succeed. “I think it’s a fantastic initiative. I see a lot of respect and interest in this project,” said Reyinger.

He added that he was in doubt that NHS Connecting for Health boss Richard Granger should be given the additional time now needed. “I’m convinced that Richard Granger will make this a success – though perhaps with some delays and we may also see some more surprises. But in three to four years it will deliver… I love it.”

In 2004 GE became Fujitsu’s sub-contractor for Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) in the South of England. Then in January of this year it completed its purchase of IDX Corporation, becoming responsible for delivering clinical systems across London. And earlier this month it signed a contract to take over delivery of PACS systems in the North West and West Midlands.

Reyinger stressed the sheer scale of the project: “The way they have approached this project is huge. There’s high complexity with this size of project.”

And the amount of complexity involved in delivering the project was inevitably leading to some problems, he added. “This complexity is causing some delays and problems.”

Asked what he would do differently to make the project run more smoothly, GE’s top man for health information technology in EMEA said. “I would break the country into smaller units and do it at the county level.”

He added that he would also like to see a greater range of suppliers involved to “keep competition and innovation” alive within the programme. “This country will be blocked for 10 years and competition will suffer.”