Credit: Torsten Simon/Pixabay [1]

The NHS has signed two six-figure deals with BT to provide network connectivity to vaccination sites around the UK for the next year.

The slightly smaller of the two contracts, worth £770,158, covers connections to the NHS’s core nationwide Health and Social Care Network introduced in 2017. HSCN allows NHS entities to procure connectivity services from a range of providers; as of November 2020, it has completely replaced the 14-year-old N3 network, for which BT was the sole supplier.

Alongside the connections to HSCN, BT was been awarded a separate deal covering the provision of WiFi connections to vaccine centres. This contract is worth £803,624.

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Each of the two deals were awarded by NHS England, came into effect on 7 January and run for a period of 12 months. The cumulative value of the contracts is £1.57m.

Little detail is provided in the contract award notices, other than the specification that each deal relates to the “provision of… connectivity into vaccination sites”. 

The engagements with BT for fixed and wireless connections come shortly after O2 was awarded a £9m one-year contract [5]for the provision of mobile services and devices to the coronavirus vaccination programme. That contract runs from Christmas Eve 2021 until the end of this year.