Dublin-based firm wins NHS contracts worth £1.75m


12 May 2008

Financial and purchasing applications provider iB Solutions has won five contracts with 16 NHS (National Health Service) trusts in the UK worth a total of £1.75m sterling.

The Dublin-based company, an IBA subsidiary, is the largest provider of financial and procurement applications and services to the NHS in England with a 52pc market share. It provides its own Integra web-enabled financial application to 105 NHS trusts and runs an Oracle managed service for another 140 NHS trusts.

The new deals consolidate its market position.

The contracts include one with a consortium of five NHS trusts in Greater Manchester, which has agreed a four-year contract for a bureau service from the group’s data centre at Prestwich in Manchester.

“The contract was won in an open tender and reflects the increasing popularity of fully managed services to deliver a low-risk and highly cost-effective solution to the NHS,” commented Eamon Morris, managing director of iB Solutions.

A consortium of six NHS organisations in Birmingham will implement the Integra suite of web-enabled financial and purchasing applications under a new contract. The Birmingham consortium will also replace its Version One document management and imaging system with Integra for automatic scanning, recognition, storage, archiving, and retrieval of documents.

Three primary care trusts (PCTs) in Nottinghamshire are also buying the scanning and electronic invoice approval package, and a mental health trust in the West Midlands has also agreed a three-year contract for Integra.

Also, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is upgrading its Integra applications and taking a new OCR scanning package.

Almost two-thirds of all iB Solutions’ customers have moved to electronic storage of documents, which reflects the importance of this solution for delivery efficiency and cost savings, according to the company.

By Niall Byrne