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News >> Technology >>
TCS bags $214m contract from UK health service
By siliconindia staff writer
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Wednesday, 28 January 2004, 20:30 IST
MUMBAI: The Mumbai-based TCS, India ’s largest software services company, has won a £120m (Rs 984 crore) contract from National Health Services (NHS), Britain ’s state-owned provider of health services. It involves creation and maintenance of electronic records for hospitals in Southern England .
The contract, part of a £896m project, is to be executed over nine years till ’13. TCS has won the contract as part of an alliance led by Fujitsu Services, according to information on the Fujitsu website. Other companies in the fray included EDS, the second largest IT services firm in the world. The contract is part of a ten-year £5bn IT modernisation programme being undertaken by the NHS. Currently, hospitals have paper records that have to be manually retrieved when patients need treatment or see a consultant.
Earlier, a BT consortium had bagged the contract to develop and run the ‘data spine’ for the national care records system, which will be supported by infrastructure at the regional level by local service providers (LSP). BT, Accenture and CSC have already been awarded contracts for London , the North East, the Eastern region, the North West and Midlands .
EDS had bid along with LogicaCMG, SchlumbergerSema and Cerner. Director general of NHS IT, Richard Granger, said in a statement that the delay in awarding the final contract was due to long negotiations for a better price.
TCS claims its pioneering offshore outsourcing model and past expertise of working with NHS helped it bag the contract. It has been recruiting healthcare professionals for the last few months in its bid to prepare for the project. It will need to hire physicians, radiologists, pharmacists and nurses, sources said.