NI Child Health System Support and Maintenance Contract

The NI Child Health application serves a business area that is wide, varied and complex in nature. It covers areas such as: • Newborn Bloodspot Screening • Pre-school Childhood Vaccination and Immunisation Programme • Pre-school Developmental Surveillance • School Health - Medical, Appraisal, Vision Screening, Audiology Screening, Vaccination Programme • Influenza Programme • Early Intervention Transformation Programme in Nursery Schools • Looked After Children - Health Appraisal and Review The Child Health programme is comprised of a number of complex processes and supporting algorithms that help ensure the right people are called for the right treatment at the right time and that any significant results or outcomes are suitably followed up. Failure in any part of this has potential for adverse patient impact. The CHS is a regional solution and is used by the 5 Trusts. It has been developed and honed over its lifetime to help ensure it completely supports this complex business. Any failure in the CHS will significantly increase the risk of failure in the service. This is particularly evident in the neonatal screening programs which are time critical programs where blood samples taken on day 5 of life result in positive cases need to start treatment by day 21. If late diagnoses happened as a result of failures in the CHS, this would have very serious human and financial consequences for families and HSC. In addition, the system provides numerous analysis reports for use by various bodies including: Government; DHSS&PS; HSCB; PHA; Trusts; NISRA; LCGs and GPs. CHS data is also used for research and audit purposes and for many of these organisations is an invaluable source of information to enable the planning, monitoring and management of population need and service provision. 2. Unique supplier knowledge and experience The Child Health System was developed and tailored to meet the Northern Ireland business needs by SWIFT. The SWIFT team were acquired by EDS who, in turn were acquired by HP. A subsequent reorganisation of HP saw the original SWIFT team become part of DXC, i.e. the current contractor. In the coming months, DXC will move the SWIFT team, and key associated commercial managers, to CSC Computer Sciences Ltd, a large technology organisation providing worldwide IT services. Throughout these acquisitions the team providing CHS services remained constant. Consequently, CSC Computer Sciences Ltd will have an excellent and experienced team that fully understands the system and the NI business needs. Not only will the team be able to continue to provide high quality support services but they will also be able to continue to provide solutions to meet the changing NI business needs in timescales that would not be possible with a less knowledgeable and experienced team. Given the technology and the bespoke nature of the application, it would not be possible to find a replacement supplier capable to providing the required services. Further, to build the required level of expertise and knowledge into a replacement supplier would be an extremely long process and would require substantial input from CSC Computer Sciences Ltd, as the main source, over a long period of time. This task, assuming CSC Computer Sciences Ltd were agreeable, would take several years. There is documentation on many of the modules within NI Child Health system but it is requires a detailed level of system and business knowledge to ensure the correct understanding. Only CSC Computer Sciences Ltd can supply the detailed level of knowledge and the details of the intricacies involved across the various modules to help ensure successful delivery of services to the NI children. Whilst BSO staff would be able to support certain elements of the application, it does not have the skillset or experience to support large components of the system. 3. Replacement system already procured A strategic decision has been made to replace the functionality provided by the NI Child Health application with encompass, which has now been procured. In conclusion, only CSC Computer Sciences Ltd has the requisite knowledge and experience to support and maintain the NI Child Health system.