Perth, July 04, 2005
The Western Australia Department of Health has extended its information management alliance contract with Fujitsu Australia for another five years. Under the renewed contract, worth $75 million over the next five years to members of the InfoHEALTH Alliance consortium, Fujitsu Australia will oversee an applications and infrastructure overhaul to support more patient-friendly health services.
The contract supports the Western Australia Government’s $1.7 billion capital commitment to improve health services in the state, including a $335 million capital injection for an information and communications technology upgrade. The increased funding supports the delivery of the 2004 recommendations of the Health Reform Committee.
The contract renewal was based on a performance review of Fujitsu Australia’s initial five-year contract, including an independent benchmarking study carried out by IT analysts META Group, the government’s own review of the business case, and the results of a customer satisfaction survey.
Rod Vawdrey, CEO Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand commented: “For the past two decades Fujitsu has been the only IT business solutions organisation that has had a consistent footprint in the healthcare sector at both the State and Federal level across Australia. Our strong track-record is supported by an equally successful global health industry focus.
“We’re proud of our five-year partnership with the Western Australia Department of Health and remain committed to supporting the Department’s health reform priorities.”
Fujitsu will work in partnership with the Department in a continuation of the InfoHEALTH Alliance agreement. The focus will be to move the state’s healthcare services from a hospital and discipline-centric system to a patient-centric system. Instead of holding separate sets of patient records at individual hospitals or health services, information will be accessible centrally, subject to privacy restrictions, regardless of where the treatment is delivered. Other initiatives under the health reform program include developing the role of secondary hospitals around the metropolitan area and providing new services such as hospital in the home.
"The InfoHEALTH Alliance contract includes the delivery of a range of core clinical and corporate applications, including the management of public patient data in metropolitan and rural Western Australia," said WA Department of Health Acting Director General Dr Neale Fong.
"This important partnership will see the continuation of high quality information and communications technology support services being provided to the Department to June 2010.”
In contrast to traditional IT outsourcing agreements which lock the parties into a set of agreed deliverables, the Alliance is a co-sourcing arrangement with a high degree of flexibility to change priorities and services. Under the agreement Fujitsu will lead a consortium of companies and can engage third party providers under contract, giving the Western Australia Department of Health access to the best capabilities in the market.
“We call this an ‘open book’ model,” said Vawdrey. “It is an ideal approach to outsourcing for the public sector because it provides better cost visibility as well as the flexibility to ensure the investment is always going towards the highest priorities.”
Fujitsu Australia was first engaged by the Western Australia Department of Health in June 2000 to consolidate and stabilise its information technology systems. Significant system outages have reduced from around 70 per month to a small handful, and system availability is tracking at above best-practice standards. Over the next five years Fujitsu expects to reduce the allocation of resources to support and maintenance activities and direct them to new projects in infrastructure and systems renewal.
