Last of South acute groups out to tender

A variety of care providers in the south west of England have jointly tendered for an integrated community-wide e-prescribing system. The ten-year contract is worth between £2.5m and £4m.

South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is the lead organisation in the South Devon consortium, which is one of six southern acute collaborations formed to invest in a variety of new IT systems; having received nothing from the National Programme for IT.

The groups have attracted £80m in central funding for their projects and will contribute another £100m locally. All six groups have now gone out to tender via the Official Journal of the European Union.

The South Devon partnership is unique because it includes only one acute provider. Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust, Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group, Devon Partnership NHS Trust, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust and Devon Doctors Limited will also benefit from the contract.

Together, they are looking to procure an integrated community wide e-prescribing solution, including implementation, maintenance and ongoing support.

“The solution must directly contribute to improvements in patient care, for example by providing comprehensive decision support, based on information such as pathology results from other systems, to support the creation and management of prescriptions and recording of medicine administration (including full decision support),” the tender document says.

It explains that organisations are looking for functionality that will support cross community working on prescribing and medication administration, including patient-held records systems.

The system should provide e-prescribing functionality for both acute and community hospitals, “with full flow of information to and from GP Practices so that medicine reconciliation and changes to prescriptions can be shared”, the tender says.

Requests to participate are due by 13 May.