Digital Healthcare appointed to major NHS Framework contract

NHS Connecting for Health, on behalf of the NHS, has appointed Digital Healthcare to the NHS Additional Supply Capability & Capacity (ASCC) Framework following open competition bids to provide additional capacity and capability in the supply of IT products and services to the NHS.

Digital Healthcare has been appointed as a supplier under the Clinical Information Technology (CIT) Services Lot of the ASCC Framework. This Framework is designed to support both the delivery of existing IT systems and provide new clinical technology and services as NHS business requirements emerge.

This contract is not intended to replace the contracts already let for the National Programme for IT, or conflict with any existing contractual arrangements, but is intended to supplement the existing supply capacity and to enable new requirements to be met through a readily available approved Framework and to mitigate risks of existing suppliers being unable to meet contractual commitments.

The Framework will enable the NHS to streamline the procurement of IT systems and services from suppliers who have demonstrated experience in the health sector and can be used to support both National Programme for IT (NPfIT) related work and wider IT related projects.

Digital Healthcare, which is headquartered in Cambridge, England, designs and develops advanced technology for improving healthcare delivery. The company already provides software and related services for very large scale population eye screening, which was pioneered in the UK and is now in use throughout the world with more than a million patients being managed in fully automated care pathways. The company has been developing advanced clinical pathway systems for use in acute care in recent years and has recently announced a major contract with Johns Hopkins in the United States to computerise the workflow in its world famous Wilmer Eye Institute.

Commenting on the ASCC appointment, Managing Director, Martin Procter, said "Digital Healthcare's software is already used to screen for eye disease for over a million UK patients with diabetes. This is an opportunity for all parts of the NHS to utilize our groundbreaking technology to improve patient care".

Founding Director, Gerry Skews, said: "Automated care pathway software changes the way healthcare is delivered by managing the patient through their individual care journey."

He added: "Public health initiatives aim to raise awareness but patients at risk of debilitating diseases such as Diabetes, Hypertension and Cancer need special and regular attention. Our software provides automatic surveillance for millions of patients at risk - if symptoms appear then the software provides electronic referral directly to clinical experts and the sooner treatment can be provided the better the outcome for the patient.

"In hospital and acute care, managing large numbers of patients is even more important because clinicians often need to work quickly to perform a range of diagnostic tests, compile and analyse the results and treat the patient with the best techniques available. Software that takes care of interfacing to diagnostic equipment, linking to patient records, providing powerful diagnostic imaging tools and managing the whole workflow across the hospital brings improved efficiency and peace of mind for both clinical specialists and, more importantly, patients".

Kevin McDonnell, Operations Director at Digital Healthcare, said: "Digital Healthcare has been providing IT systems and services to the NHS for a number of years and over the last three years has been very successful in implementing a large number of systems to run Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programmes throughout England and in Wales. We are very pleased to have been appointed to the NHS ASCC Framework as we now have the potential opportunity to support the NHS more fully with their Clinical Information Technology requirements and the services that they provide to patients enabled by these technologies."

To achieve the broad scope that the Lot 2 of the ASCC Framework provides, it has been subdivided into a number of service categories to accommodate the specialist providers of IT Health Services.