[London, UK] University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) has issued a tender with an estimated value of £49m to procure an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system that other health and care organisations within the Coventry and Warwickshire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) can potentially move onto to create an Electronic Citizen Record.

The newly-released tender indicates the trust will initially require a ‘fully integrated’ Patient Administration System (PAS), Maternity, Renal and Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system to offer ‘the most extensive enterprise-wide clinical and administrative functionality’.

UHCW is leading the procurement on behalf of the other organisations in the STP footprint, including Coventry City Council and Warwickshire North and Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

Plans for the development an Electronic Citizen Record were initially revealed in the Sustainability and Transformation Plan published last year including the blueprint set to transform health and care services in Coventry and Warwickshire.

It is expected that the EPR contract will run for a period of seven years, with the option of an up to three-year renewal at the discretion of the trust, and suppliers have until 5 January next year to submit a request to participate, according to the tender.

UHCW’s latest board papers indicate the trust has to improve its ICT infrastructure if it wants to transform services ‘in line’ with its strategic and STP objectives.

Dr Alec Price-Forbes, Clinical Lead for the EPR Programme and CCIO for the STP, told BJ-HC: "As stated in the OJEU notice, the procurement is intended to allow for the future expansion of any procured solution which can then be extended for use by other health and care organisations within Coventry and Warwickshire’s STP footprint to create an Electronic Citizen Record. 

"However, one of the reasons for using the Competitive Procedure with Negotiation is to allow the Trust to explore how this could delivered within the scope of the OJEU notice. Until we have concluded the procurement we are unable to provide any further information on how this might work."

Most recently, NHS England awarded UHCW £488,000 to improve cyber defence capabilities after the May WannaCry attack.