Industry news

NHS Confederation CEO Mike Farrar yesterday warned Ministers that “the NHS's cash crisis is so great that it will have to either cut services to patients or close accident and emergency and maternity units if it is to avoid going bust”. The need to make £20bn of efficiency savings by 2015 "means our finances are under more strain than ever", he says.

£1.2bn of those savings are expected to come from the hospital procurement budget. However, a National Audit Office (NAO) report has found that there is a significant lack of standardisation and bulk buying by NHS trusts, with prices for identical items varying by some 50%. And this issue is only likely to get worse, as by 2014 nearly all hospitals will be run as independent foundation trusts, leaving ministers with little direct control over their spending priorities.

A consistent basis for measuring performance, whilst still giving trusts autonomy to make their own decision, is required.

The NHS problems remain under the spotlight, as an appendix to a Department of Health document has revealed that the cost of the government’s NHS reforms could outweigh the savings made by cutting large numbers of administrators.

Concerned about its reputation following a swathe of corruption cases, India has launched a “Credible India” campaign. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has appointed management consultancy Bain, to assist it rebuild faith in India’s business community and profile as an investment destination.

“Credible India” is a marketing campaign leveraging the country’s successful tourism campaign “Incredible India”.

Kerry Hallard, Managing Director of Buffalo Communications and Communications Director of the NOA commented: “India has been the source of much negative commentary of late. The country’s high attrition rate and soaring cost of living coupled with stories of UK companies bringing their business back to the UK due to dissatisfaction, have caused real concern for many of the country’s leading companies. Ata time when India is vying to be a real power house among offshore destinations, it is essential India invests time and money rebuilding its credibility and re-climbs the world rankings”.

Cumbria is set to join forces with other fire and rescue services in the north west by transferring its control room function to a single centre in Warrington.

The collaboration has been identified as the best route to secure a resilient and long-term solution for the county’s fire call-handling and mobilising function.

Following the collapse of the Government’s FiReControl Project at the end of 2010, fire and rescue services in the north west have been looking at how they could work together to get maximum benefit from the funds Government is making available for future changes to control and the replacement of control systems.

The collaboration will transfer fire 999 call handing and fire engine mobilisation, currently carried out by individual Services to a local authority controlled company, NW Fire Control Ltd, based at a single centre in Warrington. Cumbria County Council members would be directors of this company. New arrangements would begin in 2014.

Debenhams the department store is upgrading its HP servers across 100 stores, with a larger roll out to follow. The upgrade has been highlighted to improve customer service through improved transaction processing.

A spokesperson at Debenhams expressed concern that its legacy hardware was putting the company at risk on non-compliance to PCI and subject to fines.

Debenhams is continuing in its quest to deliver a multi-channel strategy.

Oracle has announced it’s acquisition of GoAhead Software.

The deal, announced yesterday, is expected to benefit NEPs, providing inclusive services across telecom solutions.

GoAhead’s President and COO remarked: “With over 100,000 deployments of GoAhead software by leading NEPs, GoAhead brings significant domain knowledge and engineering strength, coupled with a strong track record of delivering solutions to global network equipment providers,”

HP announced several changes to the board of directors yesterday.

Meg Whitman has been appointed as President and Chief Executive as Léo Apotheker steps down after just 11 months in office. In addition, Ray Lane has moved from his post as non-executive chairman to executive chairman. These changes come as HP recognises its need for revitalisation; “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead.” Lane commented.

The NPIA’s strategy for a centralised system is supported by The Home Affairs Committee.

Despite the recent criticism of centralising IT in the NHS, MPs have called for plans to centralise UK police IT systems to be protected.

As the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) remarked, there is currently a “duplication of investment and effort.” The NPIA’s Information Systems Improvement Strategy would see hundreds of systems replaced with nationally available services.

NHS 24, Scotland’s provider of national telehealth and telecare services, has named Capgemini as the “preferred bidder” to run its clinical applications and patient contact management services.

Scotland’s health advice service says contract with new services provider will be signed early next year. It said the appointment is part of a new IT infrastructure programme.

The technology and outsourcing services company will replace Clinical Solutions, which extended its telephone triage software, decision support and related services contract with NHS 24 for two years in March 2010.

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, has announced it has acquired Assistly, an instant customer-service help desk built for the cloud.

Assistly lets small companies and emerging businesses set up and deliver social customer-service in minutes, with zero-touch onboarding.

"Salesforce has spent over a decade democratizing enterprise applications in the cloud," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "The Assistly acquisition doubles down on that strategy by putting us at the heart of the new trend of customer service help desk applications that have instant sign up and zero-touch onboarding, expanding the potential reach of the Service Cloud to millions of companies around the world."

The government has announced an acceleration of the dismantling of the National Programme for IT, following the conclusions of a new review by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority (MPA). The programme was created in 2002 under the last government and the MPA has concluded that it is not fit to provide the modern IT services that the NHS needs.

In May 2011 the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons that the MPA would be reviewing the NHS National Programme for IT.

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “This Government will not allow costly failure of major projects to continue. That’s why we have set up the Major Projects Authority – to work in collaboration with central Government Departments to help us get firmer control of our major projects, and ensure there is a more systematic approach by departments as well as regular, planned scrutiny to keep projects on track.”

“The National Programme for IT embodies the type of unpopular top-down programme that has been imposed on front-line NHS staff in the past. Following the Major Projects Authority review, we now need to move faster to push power to the NHS frontline and get the best value for taxpayers’ money.”