U.K.’s NHS taps Gartner to help plan $9B IT overhaul

LONDON — The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) has tapped IT researcher Gartner Inc. to provide market intelligence services as the health organization forges ahead with a mammoth, £5 billion ($9.2 billion) project to upgrade its information technology infrastructure.

Gartner will provide the NHS’ National Programme for IT with research and analysis such as best practices and technology change management under a £154,000 ($283,345) one-year, renewable contract, the NHS said Tuesday. Gartner won the contract as part of a public tender for research services; other bidders were not revealed.

The tender award comes nearly two years after the NHS kicked off its project to update hospital systems throughout England, with objectives such as creating a comprehensive electronic patient record system and providing electronic appointment and booking.

Gartner has been working with the NHS to provide research since the procurement stage of the project and the contract is really a formalization of the relationship, said Gordon Head, development manager of Gartner’s European Healthcare Business.

Much of the procurement for the project has already taken place, with contracts awarded for e-mail and directory systems, databases, IT infrastructure, software and broadband access.

The NHS is now focusing on best practices for implementing technologies, cost savings and technology integration, it said.

“The NHS can learn something from looking at projects around the world,” Head said, although he added that the NHS project “is groundbreaking and leading in its entirety.”

The NHS overhaul has been called the largest IT project in the world, costing billions of pounds before it is expected to wrap up in a final phase between 2006 and 2008. The project has gained attention not just because of its size and scope, but also for a unique procurement process that sets regional IT providers against one another, allowing them to compete for each other’s contracts if they miss targets.

Also attracting attention is the project’s bargain-driving head, Richard Granger. While Granger and his team have been noted for their negotiation skills, the program has come under some criticism for failing to communicate the potential benefits of the project to build public support.

A report released last month by London-based think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research warned that not enough evaluation had been done to create a body of evidence on the effectiveness of the project.

It was not clear Tuesday if the NHS’ formalized partnership with Gartner would lead to any changes in how the project is being portrayed to the doctors and public who are eventually expected to adopt the technology.

However, Head said that the National Programme is taking clinical adoption “very, very seriously.”

The NHS said that it has no further plans to employ any other private sector research companies, and that the Gartner analysts will remain employees of the research firm.