Accenture closes in on Aus government e-health tender

Accenture is understood to have secured the national infrastructure partner contract for Australia's AU$467m personally-controlled electronic healthcare records (PCEHR) project.

The tender, released by the Department of Health and Ageing in February, includes three core components; a benefits and evaluation partner, a national infrastructure partner, and a change and adoption partner.

Sources close to the tender claim that Accenture beat competitors to win the infrastructure component. This project includes the detailed development and implementation of the physical systems, ICT solutions, products and interfaces necessary for reliable and efficient operation.

Accenture will also be responsible for testing and the integration of PCEHR with existing eHealth infrastructure around Australia.

While the contract win has yet to be announced Accenture is understood to be actively hiring for the project as is looking for Oracle experts to support the implementation.

In June, a consortium led by PriceWaterhouseCoopers was awarded the benefits and evaluation contract. The federal government also appointed Ernst & Young to provide independent quality assurance.

The PWC consortium includes McKinsey & Company, Ocean Informatics, Trilogy Information Solutions, and the University of Queensland.

The Benefits and Evaluation Partner will work from development to the implementation of the system, analysing how PCEHR will improve patient care.

“E-health records will help patients all over Australia more easily manage their health information, meaning that patients will no longer have to remember every immunisation, every medical test, every prescription as they move from doctor to doctor,” the health minister Nicola Roxon said.

The federal government has yet to select the change and adoption partner. PCEHR is slated to come on-stream from July 2012, but timing appears to have slipped as tenders originally specified that the contract period would begin on June 30. ®