Government agency Connecting for Health (CfH) wants to create a catalogue of suppliers to draw on for extra capacity to help deliver the £6bn National Programme for NHS IT, Computing can reveal.

The change of approach comes against a backdrop of supplier problems, including last week’s departure of systems integrator Accenture, subcontractor iSoft’s financial difficulties, and the replacement of GE Healthcare (formerly IDX) in the London and Southern regions.

Tendering for framework deals to provide extra capacity such as local clinical systems and installation expertise is expected to start in the next few weeks, CfH chief executive Richard Granger told Computing.

‘I want to refresh our store of contingency,’ he said. ‘We are three years into the programme, in an immature marketplace, with a large amount of work in front of us and in an ecosystem of prime and subcontractors that all have challenges in terms of pace and capacity.

‘There are restrictions placed on public bodies around options available legally in the event of things going wrong, but I want a catalogue of places I can go to.’

Creating contingency plans is a good idea, but putting them into practice will not be simple, says North Bristol NHS Trust IT director Martin Bell.

‘The more people that are involved, the better,’ he said.

‘There are some holes in the programme in terms of local clinical systems, integration work and middleware, where the NHS could benefit from acting collectively. But for larger systems there are a limited number of people who can physically do it.’

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