GP Out of Hours ICT Management, Maintenance and Support

BSO require a managed service to cover management, maintenance, and support of the Regional GP OOH IT Service environment. The system is hosted in the BSO Datacentres and is supported via a managed service with DXC. The services are required to provide continued management maintenance and support of the Regional GP Out Of Hours Clinical information system and the supporting IT services that enables its operation. The Regional GP Out of Hours (GP OOH) Service provides for urgent conditions, a comprehensive, safe and efficient Out of Hours Service to the Northern Ireland population, who are also entitled to General Medical Services (GMS) until the patients own GP surgery is next open. DXC as the managed service provider provide critical services ensuring the continued operation and support of the GP Out of Hours IT System. The services DXC provide are listed above. Their experience in supporting this complex technical environment has been built up over the past twelve years. They have implemented their proprietary Platform X management tool into the infrastructure to streamline software maintenance and upgrades within the IT environment. The managed service provides contractual, reporting, and performance management of Advanced as a subcontractor. Advanced provide the software (Adastra and Odyssey) that the GP OOH service depends on to provide the Clinical System solution. The software is licensed for use by BSO via a contract with DXC. This relationship has also been in place for over 12 years. Moving to an alternative provider incorporating all of the required managed services provided by DXC is not possible in the available timeframe. Transferring the technical support services, experience, and expertise that DXC provide to another supplier without an appropriate knowledge and skills transfer process would be extremely high risk to the continued operation of the GP Out of Hours service and could not be done safely within the time currently available. We estimate it would take at least six months to safely transfer the support of these services to another provider and this would require both DXC as the current provider and the new provider to be involved jointly in the hand over process. Failure of the OOH service means that patients, by default, will attend the already overburdened Emergency Departments.