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NHS Scotland to refresh creaking, 25-year-old apps

Hey pal, see that mainframe software over there, it's well old (auld)

NHS Scotland is dragging its big iron software into the 21st century by putting out a call for suppliers to replace some very dusty applications, which in some cases are a quarter of a century old.

A contract notice for the Mainframe Solutions Transformation Programme was published in the Official Journal of the EU, and the business is valued at between £8-32 million over ten years.

“The current set of mainframe software solutions have served NHS Scotland exceptionally well over the past (in some cases) 25-plus years, but are now expensive to maintain and are not efficient in supporting a modern service that is dependent on fast electronic communications and paper-lite ways of working,” the OJEU stated.

The work is split into two separate Lots covering the Community Health Index and the Scottish Child Public Health and Wellbeing System — suppliers can bid for both areas.

The existing Community Health Index is to be replaced by an Enterprise Master Patient Index with an optional record locator service — this involves new hardware, apps, comms, services, hosting and support.

The second Lot concerns the replacement of the Scottish Child Public Health and Wellbeing System, and the School and Scottish Immunisation and Recall System — again the work involves a range of kit, software and services.

“The solutions will support the improvement of health and wellbeing for Scotland’s population by using call and recall for national programmes and interventions,” the contract notice stated.

The systems needs to ensure the appropriate immunisation is given according to existing policies and the vaccines already provided.

NHS Scotland will separately procure an implementation partner to “facilitate implementation and integration of the solutions with each other and with other NHS solutions and services”.

“This procurement will be conducted once the solutions are sufficiently established to enable the role of the implementation partner to be scoped,” according to the contract notice.

Suppliers that expressed an interest for either of the two Lots will be invited to tender this week. ®

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