Simpl UK wins highly competitive Welsh NHS tender
Simpl UK brings Kiwi ICT expertise to Wales for the Welsh Clinical Portal project
The UK division of innovative Kiwi ICT service provider and consultancy Simpl has won the highly competitive tender to provide services to NHS Wales for its national Welsh Clinical Portal project.
Simpl’s General Manager International, Paul Whiston, confirmed this week that Simpl UK beat out five other leading UK-based providers to win the contract that will see the team scope and design the application integration strategy for the Welsh National Clinical Portal.
“This is an exciting win, not only because of the complexity and scale of the project, but because the highly competitive nature of the tender really tested Simpl’s offering alongside established UK ICT leaders – with Simpl coming out on top,” says Mr Whiston.
The creation of a national Welsh Clinical Portal is a key strategic initiative for NHS Wales – the body charged with looking after the health of more than three million Welshmen.
Currently separate systems deal with different information such as test results, discharge letters, referrals and administration details. The lack of “communication” between systems creates extra work for healthcare staff who have to log into different computer systems and refer to paper records during the course of the day. The disparate information also makes it difficult to see and understand all aspects of a case, and in a worst-case-scenario, sometimes the information needed isn’t there to treat the patient at the point of care.
The Welsh Clinical Portal will allow healthcare staff to log on at terminals anywhere in a hospital and view records and results from a range of systems on a single screen, providing better information to support decisions about treatment. Ultimately patient care and safety increases when hospitals can operate more efficiently.
Initially Simpl’s team, led by Senior Solutions Architect Mark Simmons, will spend five months concentrating on scoping and designing the national strategy to integrate the Welsh Clinical Portal with existing systems within NHS Trusts as it is rolled out over two years.
”We are excited to be beginning a relationship with NHS Wales. This win puts Simpl in the driving seat for continuing to partner with them in the large amount of work that will flow on from this initial scoping phase,” says Mr Whiston.
Mr Whiston says the team was confident that Simpl’s vast experience in the health sector would more than match that of the competition and allow Simpl UK to impress NHS Wales. He says an additional benefit is the boost the win will give Simpl UK’s profile.
“Being a New Zealand company we are known for our innovative approach and ‘can-do’ attitude. The NHS Wales win clearly communicates that we have the strategic thinking and technical expertise to support this. The high visibility of this project means that we will significantly raise Simpl UK’s profile within NHS Wales and across the health sector in general,” says Mr Whiston.
The initial five-month scoping and design project commenced Mid-January 2008.
