Award

EPES, CFU and Ophthalmic applications Support, Upgrade and hardware Refresh

  • Business Services Organisation

UK5: Transparency notice - Procurement Act 2023 - view information about notice types

Notice identifier: 2025/S 000-007788

Procurement identifier (OCID): ocds-h6vhtk-04e93c (view related notices)

Published 4 March 2025, 11:05am



Scope

Reference

DAC20001

Description

In June 2008, the Electronic Prescribing and Eligibility System (EPES) went live. The objective of the project was to capture prescription information from Community Pharmacies into a central EPES Database. This system was introduced to speed up pharmacy re-payments, allow for closer scrutiny of the prescribing and dispensing process, and reduce lost income through patients falsely claiming to be in receipt of a qualifying Social Security benefit.

Following its successful launch, EPES was extended to support Dental and Ophthalmic claims processing, the DOP system. This DAC will ensure continuity of services for the Family Practitioner System Team.

Failure to provision the extended support places BSO at serious risk of an application failure from which we would be unable to recover from. Contractor payments of approximately £576m per annum would be defaulted on and there would also be a risk of fraud as it would be impossible to process prescriptions and estimate payments manually.

DXC Technology will support the EPES systems for BSO. The scope of this Contract includes:

• Planning and project management.

• Procurement and support of 8 new workstations and scanners.

• Assistance from DXC and Kodak Alaris to setup new workstations with the Kodak Alaris Kodak Info Input scanning software.

• Health checks.

• Perform renewal of the existing labor support contract.

• Extension of Kodak support contract

• Recompile of code to make it supportable.

• ​Upgrade to Windows 11.

£1,080,186 has been previously directed awarded to DXC for support, maintenance, and upgrade works to support the EPES system. It is our intention to complete a further Direct Award to the value of £5,500,000.


Contract 1. EPES, CFU and Ophthalmic applications Support​, Upgrade and Hardware Refresh

Supplier

Contract value

  • £6,580,186.27 excluding VAT
  • £7,896,223.52 including VAT

Above the relevant threshold

Earliest date the contract will be signed

31 March 2025

Contract dates (estimated)

  • 1 April 2025 to 31 December 2026
  • Possible extension to 31 December 2030
  • 5 years, 9 months

Description of possible extension:

This DAC is to allow support to be provided until systems can be replaced. This support cannot be provided by any other supplier as DXC have the exclusive rights to the software.​

BSO ITS wish to enter into a one year Contract with the option to extend for a further four x one year extensions. The ePharmacy Programme was supposed to provide replacement systems for EPES, but this has been significantly delayed due to budgetary restrictions.

The procurement of replacement systems is likely to be begin in 2026 with a proposed implementation date of quarter three in the Financial Year of 2030.

Main procurement category

Services

CPV classifications

  • 72000000 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Contract locations

  • UKN - Northern Ireland

Other information

Conflicts assessment prepared/revised

Yes


Procedure

Procedure type

Direct award

Direct award justification

Single supplier - intellectual property or exclusive rights

DXC are the incumbent contractors and own the Intellectual Property Rights on the software.​

Failure to provision the extended support places BSO at serious risk of an application failure from which we would be unable to recover from. Contractor payments of approximately £576m per annum would be defaulted on and there would also be a risk of fraud as it would be impossible to process prescriptions and estimate payments manually.


Supplier

ENTSERV UK LIMITED

  • Companies House: 00053419
  • Public Procurement Organisation Number: PGCJ-9313-QJLY

Royal Pavilion

Aldershot

GU11 1PZ

United Kingdom

Region: UKJ37 - North Hampshire

Small or medium-sized enterprise (SME): No

Voluntary, community or social enterprise (VCSE): No

Contract 1. EPES, CFU and Ophthalmic applications Support​, Upgrade and Hardware Refresh


Contracting authority

Business Services Organisation

  • Public Procurement Organisation Number: PCQH-8657-NGMT

2 Franklin Street

Belfast

BT2 8DQ

United Kingdom

Region: UKN06 - Belfast

Organisation type: Public authority - central government

Devolved regulations that apply: Northern Ireland