Western Australia’s Department of Health has signed a $6.3 million contract with CSC for the implementation of a patient administration system (PAS) by the year's end, despite speculation the system would not be replaced until 2014.
Under the deal, CSC will deploy the system to the two hospital campuses as part of the state’s e-health reform project, quashing assumptions the system wouldn’t be in place for another three years.
The PAS is an electronic health record system which stores personal information about patients of public health facilities and helps manage care from admission to discard. Major medical facilities use a PAS to coordinate patient care and guarantee clinical outcomes.
The department is aiming for the system to be a single application base across WA Health providing a single source of reference data using common practices.
CSC will work with iSoft, the department’s chosen software provider for the project.
Commenting on the deal, CSC Australia national director of health services, Lisa Pettigrew, said the company had previously implemented iSOFT PAS products into several hospitals and primary care trusts across the UK and Europe.
CSC will also deliver a range of services including program and quality management services, PAS testing and training, technical readiness, patient index analysis, and development of a learning management system.
The company was recently believed to have made the shortlist for phase two of the tendering process for the national infrastructure partner sought by the Department of Health and Ageing for the national e-health rollout. Fujitsu, Oracle, Microsoft and Telstra were also believed to have made the shortlist in the tender process.
The WA Department of Health also outlined an infrastructure overhaul last year, going to market for the procurement of managed central computing services, to include WA Health source primary and secondary data centres, servers, storage, appliances, firewalls, and a data network.
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