Orion Contract Support for NIECR

Since its inception in 2013, NIECR has become a critical system for Healthcare staff across Northern Ireland providing key, up-to-date patient information. NIECR is a web based portal that sits on top of a large range of current HSC information and clinical systems to give Health and Social Care professionals a single consolidated view of a patient's key medical information. NIECR is a critical front line system providing a clinical interface for over 30,000 active users. The number of users continues to steadily increase from across all Secondary Care Trusts, Ambulance Service, Primary Care (including GP Out of Hours), community and the independent sector. Many of the users are front line users who depend on NIECR to inform clinical decision making especially in emergency situations when essential medical background information would not be available and a patient could be at risk if for example a medication is prescribed without knowing the contraindications. Patient Portal as a module of NIECR provides a clinical view from within NIECR and a patient facing view via a web application. The patient portal is available to patients from all clinical specialties who are using NIECR. The Patient Portal will continue to require support and development by Orion Health as the user base expands Orion Health own Intellectual Property rights to NIECR and therefore no other supplier would have rights to amend the software in order to provide support or new developments. In addition to the IP rights being held by the supplier, BSO would not have the skills or resources required to support the significant workload necessary to maintain the range and various individual elements of the NIECR services. This provides justification why a direct award contract is required and other options rejected.