Qld Health offers suppliers spot on exclusive e-health panel

Queensland Health is asking its IT suppliers to bid for a spot on a limited new panel that will help it move ahead with a mammoth e-health drive.

In the past two years the state government has committed to transforming its procurement in order to make it easier for industry to do business with agencies.

At the same time it has embarked on a significant e-health push, last year bundling the strategic and operational IT functions of its Health department into a new division dubbed eHealth Queensland.

The move was intended to bolster the state's efforts to create a "fully integrated health system", underpinned by an electronic medical record and accessed by a mobile workforce.

Since then, Queensland Health has debuted a 20-year plan for IT investment, kicked off efforts towards the $226.6 million replacement of its patient administration system, and started procurement for a $91 million overhaul of its laboratory information system,

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eHealth Queensland has also embarked on the first step in a massive program of systems transformation by signing Fujitsu and Orion Health to provide the underlying plumbing tying all its systems together, before it starts to tackle them one by one.

Now, the department is in the market for a handful of carefully-selected IT suppliers to sit on a new panel that will help the department meet its many transformation goals.

The new standing offer arrangement is only available to suppliers already certified under the Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation's ICT service panel.

There are currently 282 listed suppliers on the DSITI panel.

But only a small number of suppliers will be selected to the new e-health panel, the department said in tender documents, and the arrangement will only run for a year, with two possible 12-month extensions.

It will give suppliers the opportunity to be involved in myriad projects, including an e-medication management drive and parts of Queensland's efforts to upload information into the national My Health Record program, among others.

The department is looking for services in the areas of technical strategy and planning, systems development, solutions change management, and business change implementation.

It is taking submissions from now until 8 April.