iSoft wins Spanish contract extensions

Healthcare authorities in the Andalusian and Balearic Island regions of Spain have awarded iSoft contract extensions worth a total of €1.35m.

The Andalusian healthcare services (SAS) has renewed its contract for maintenance at 16 hospitals for another year in a deal worth €750,000.

The extension of the SAS contract is said to be for the support and maintenance of a range of iSoft applications in use at hospitals within the Andulsian regional healthcare service. The initial project was awarded in 2006 and this latest order takes the total value of work to €2.25m.

Isoft systems are used in 16 of the 28 hospitals within SAS across Andulsia. Some hospitals have one iSoft application while others have the full range. Most of the products are locally developed and cover areas including: patient management, electronic patient record, clinical order management; together with departmental solutions such as pathology, intensive care, logistics, laboratory and pharmacy.

Antonio Castillo, iSoft Spain’s strategic accounts director, said: “This maintenance contract extension is very important for iSOFT and clearly demonstrates that we continue to provide a first-class service and innovative solutions for public hospitals in the Andalusia region.”

In a separate deal the Balearic Islands healthcare service (IB-SALUT) has awarded iSoft a €600,000 contract extension to roll-out its e-prescription system to all primary care centres and pharmacies in Mallorca and Menorca.

The e-prescription system eliminates paper and so saves time, avoids mistakes and improves the monitoring of treatment. It also provides prescribing rules, a recommended list of drugs and automation of payments.

iSoft says roll-out to the 43 primary care centres in Mallorca will be completed in August and in the five centres in Menorca by December. The latest phase follows successful pilot projects at seven primary care centres in Ibiza and Formentera.

Eventually, the system will be installed at the 55 health centres and 411 pharmacies across the four Balearic Islands.

Castillo said: “We have worked very closely with IB-SALUT since 2004 in helping it develop an electronic patient record for primary care and improve services to the people of the Balearic Islands.” He added that the new e-prescription project built on this success and “will serve as model for other autonomous regions”.