Telecoms firm to provide services to 24 trusts and CCGs across the south east

Credit: BT

BT has won the aggregated contract to provide connections to the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) and other communications services to NHS organisations across the south-east of England.

The deal will see the company deliver services to 280 sites across 24 NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Sussex, and Kent. The bedrock of these services will be connecting NHS entities to HSCN via BT’s managed high-speed Ethernet network. 

End users will be offered a number of connection options, all of which will be managed by BT. Once connected to HSCN, health-service organisations will be able to access a range of tools and services, including clinical applications and cloud-based communications platforms.

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The deal runs for a term of five years. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Danny Longbottom, director of local government and health at BT, said: “Secure, flexible, high-speed connections are increasingly critical to delivering efficient, timely and patient-focused care. We’re proud to be working in partnership with NHS Digital to offer a huge range of services to eligible NHS trusts and CCGs across the south east under this new contract, including embedded security enhanced features – an absolute must when dealing with sensitive patient data and relying on cloud-based applications.”

Similar aggregated procurements have taken place in regions across England, including London, where KCOM recently won a £13.3m deal to connect 34 NHS organisations across the capital to HSCN. The access contract for the Yorkshire and Humber region – worth £120m – was awarded to Redcentric earlier this year. Aggregated procurements covering the rest of England are taking place throughout 2018.

HSCN, which went live last year, replaced the 13-year-old N3 network – for which connectivity services were supplied solely by BT. 

NHS bodies – either together in isolation – can acquire connections to HSCN and related services via a dynamic purchasing system currently containing 26 suppliers, with four more in the process of being accredited for a spot on the contract. The deal is due to run for 78 months and will be worth an estimated £500m to the featured firms.