The integrated care board supporting a region of large rural districts and some major cities has picked suppliers for a pair of major tech contracts covering transformation and core systems
The NHS entity overseeing services across North Yorkshire and Humberside has signed deals worth more than £40m to support digital transformation and IT services.
The Integrated Care Board for the region – which manages NHS services including GPs, emergency care, community nursing, planned secondary care, mental health, and dentist services – has awarded a £38.1m deal to tech firm N3i.
The agreement, which will come into effect on 1 April next year and last for an initial term of five years, covers primary care IT [and] digital transformation support services… [via] a focussed and resilient service model which operates in a sustainable, innovative and flexible way, ensuring service user satisfaction throughout”.
Alongside this contract is a near-£3.5m deal for corporate IT support services, awarded to the NHS North of England Commissioning Support Unit – which sits within NHS England.
According to newly published commercial notices, the pair of engagements will provide digital and IT support for “clinically essential services” used by NHS organisations across the North Yorkshire and Humberside region.
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The agreements are intended to provide “a continuation of the existing level of service provision and to prevent de-stabilising the delivery of clinical services, [to] ensure that services are supported on a 24/7 basis as appropriate to requirement, [and to] ensure that all systems, and associated infrastructure, are securely operated and maintained”.
The notices added that the suppliers will be expected to deliver a “proactive support service… with robust incident-management processes”.
The providers will be also be asked to “propose innovative and cost-effective strategies to address service improvement and sustainability and /or create financial efficiencies… and exploit technology and systems in support of the challenging NHS transformation agenda.”
Each of the contracts comes with the option of two further years’ extensions, which would take their ultimate lifespan to seven years.
The Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board is one of 42 such organisations supporting NHS services for individual regions across the country. The board serves a diverse region housing 1.7 million residents living in large rural areas, as well as in the cities of Hull and York.
