NHS Connecting for Health has awarded a £41m-plus
contract to provide service desk support for its National Programme
for IT (NPfIT) applications to Fujitsu Services.
The seven-year contract is designed to give the NHS
professional, scaleable and consistent first-line support giving
access to the necessary technical support for applications such as
the NHS Care Records Service, the Choose and Book appointments
system, the Electronic Prescriptions Service and the Picture
Archiving and Communications Service.
The contract's core services element, valued at £41m, includes
providing professional national service desk support, handling all
user queries associated with NPfIT systems and services. This
element will replace and scale up functions currently provided
directly by NHS Connecting for Health. It is anticipated that
services will transfer to Fujitsu during autumn 2006.
The deal also includes a contractual framework that the NHS can
use to take up optional service desk support for a wider range of
IT systems and services. Individual NHS organisations would have to
pay for these optional services, but at nationally negotiated
prices.
Earlier this month, 23 leading computer science academics wrote
to parliament calling for an independent audit of NPfIT, raising
concerns about whether a fully integrated national programme was
technically feasible.