iSOFT Secures Contract Extensions Worth A$17.4m in Northern Ireland
IT News Online Staff
2009-07-14
iSOFT Group Ltd., Australia's largest listed health IT company, has announced contract extensions in Northern Ireland totaling £8.4 million (A$17.4 million) for long-term support and maintenance services of its health information systems, including an option for one of the hospitals to progress to iSOFT's next-generation Lorenzo solution.
Under the agreements with the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, iSOFT will continue to provide services until 2015 for its Clinicom patient management system to all nine of the major acute hospitals that currently use the solution. The deal includes the right to use Lorenzo at one of the hospitals until 2015.
iSOFT also agreed to support its primary care solution with 68 GP practices for a further three years, with an option to extend this contract by an additional year. In both cases, iSOFT is offering new functions, some of which are specific to the health system in Northern Ireland.
iSOFT is installing the latest version of Clinicom in the hospitals, which also have the option to add a range of software modules such as bed management and ordering of pathology tests online. A switch to new software is now possible after a separate project to update computer hardware to HP's latest server technology, which will also improve performance and resilience.
The contracts total £998,000 (A$2.1 million) in license fees, £435,000 (A$902,000) for services, and £6.95 million (A$14.4 million) for support and maintenance, including the option to extend the primary care contract for a year.
"This is further confirmation of iSOFT's ability to deliver systems and benefits on a national scale, and provide our clients with a smooth transition to the latest Lorenzo technology at a lower cost," said Adrian Stevens, Managing Director of iSOFT UK and Ireland. "Northern Ireland is an important market for iSOFT, and these contracts put us in prime position to broaden our presence, offer additional services and collaborate in the highly innovative healthcare projects currently being considered."
"iSOFT is the linchpin in Northern Ireland's healthcare technology system and a critical component in the delivery of care to all of the country's 1.7 million people," said Stevens. "The software upgrade enables the hospitals to explore options that were previously unavailable to increase efficiency, reduce time and costs, and improve the quality of care."
iSOFT also announced three key contracts totaling about A$1.6 million for its Integra suite of Web-enabled financial and purchasing solutions, including two in new sectors that offer growth potential for iSOFT’s Business Solutions unit.
The agreements are with Australia's St Vincent's and Holy Spirit; Scope, a U.K charity for people with disabilities; and U.K housing association - Spectrum Housing Group. About A$400,000 of the total is for software licenses, A$ 700,000 is for implementation services and A$ 530,000 is for support and maintenance over five years.
"These deals demonstrate that our financial solutions business is gaining traction with a wider, global customer base against other competing financial solutions," said Eamonn Morris, Managing Director of iSOFT Business Solutions. "We identified public sector markets as being particularly suitable for our Integra suite of solutions, and it's pleasing to see these efforts are already paying off."
In its third contract for Integra in Australia, iSOFT will install a complete financial and e-purchasing solution for St Vincent's and Holy Spirit, including modules for Web-requisitioning and business intelligence. iSOFT has identified a demand for modern, Web-based solutions that drive-out inefficiencies in finance and purchasing processes to reduce costs.
In the U.K, Scope is buying an Integra e-procurement solution to raise orders online at its London head office and 370 shops across England and Wales. It will also use the OCR (optical character recognition) module to scan invoices, eliminate errors and speed the approval process. The charity expects savings of £500,000 over five years, as well as financial benefits arising from improved relationships with suppliers.
The agreement with Spectrum, one the U.K's largest housing associations with 16,000 properties in the south of England, includes the full Integra financial suite plus the business intelligence and OCR modules for its seven offices. The Web-based solutions will allow users to raise purchase orders and access financial data to control invoices, payments and costs.
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