NHS Connecting for Health has awarded Fujitsu a £41m
contract to provide service desk support for applications in the
national programme for IT.
The seven-year deal is designed to help the NHS get
professional, scalable and consistent first-line support for
applications such as the NHS Care Records Service, Choose and Book,
electronic prescriptions, picture archiving and communications.
These core services need national service desk support capable
of managing all user reports and incidents associated with them.
Fujitsu will replace and scale up functions currently provided
directly by NHS Connecting for Health.
In addition, Fujitsu can, under a framework agreement, provide
support for a wide range of NHS IT systems. Connecting for Health
said this was optional, but would give a better choice to NHS
management by enabling them to deliver quality of service and value
for money in the future. NHS organisations would need to pay for
these services, but under nationally negotiated prices.
Connecting for Health said the service was due to transfer to
Fujitsu during the autumn.
Fujitsu, the local service provider for the NPfIT in the south
of England, beat CSC and Capita IT Services for the contract.
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