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Matthew Vella
Touted as a state of the art hospital, Maltese doctors are saying they expect the new IT system at Mater Dei to be “state of the art” technology that will reflect advancements over Clinicom, the system currently in place at St Luke’s hospital.
Mater Dei could be set to be the stage of yet another controversial procurement as troubled British software group iSoft, a bidder for the EUR30 million IT system for the new hospital, now faces a serious official probe by the UK’s financial regulator over accounting irregularities.
In comments to MaltaToday, secretary general of the Medical Association of Malta Stephen Balzan said Clinicom, which is also provided by iSoft, has already been in place at St Luke’s for the past ten years.
“It’s quite robust, it never crashes and it is reliable. But the system is old, and we don’t yet have an electronic patient records system. If we’re getting a state of the art hospital, we expect a state of the art system as well,” Balzan said.
The statement by the MAM secretary-general could well fall short of expectations as British media reports confirm that iSoft’s new generation software, Lorenzo, will possibly remain unavailable before 2008.
Balzan said the doctors’ union has so far not been consulted on the forthcoming IT system at Mater Dei. “We would prefer to have the end-users consulted.”
The new IT system at Mater Dei was previously expected to be installed by December 2006, but an extension is likely to see the system in place by anything as late as March 2007 – three months before Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi inaugurates the hospital.
It is also a possibilty that should iSoft be the winning tenderer, any system it installs at Mater Dei may be gradually upgraded over the coming years once Lorenzo, which is being developed in Chennai, India, is finally fully operational.
The two main bidders – iSoft, and the AME consortium, which includes Italian firm Inso SpA, the supplier of medical equipment for Mater Dei – have tendered almost identical offers for the system. AME, with an offer of EUR29,133,600, are the cheapest bidders. iSoft’s offer is of EUR29,630,153.
According to British newspaper The Guardian, a confidential review of the “deliverability and fitness for purpose” of iSoft’s Lorenzo by Accenture and CSC concluded that there is “no believable plan for delivery” of the software.
Accenture and CSC are iSoft’s main contractors on the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), Tony Blair’s futuristic vision for a high-tech NHS.
iSoft’s centrepiece software, Lorenzo, is earmarked to be installed across 60 per cent of the UK National Health Service, which would create electronic records for up to 30 million patients.
According to the review, beyond a basic version of Lorenzo that had been tailored for GPs, “there is no well-defined scope and therefore no believable plan for releases” and that the final, fully functional version would not be available until the second quarter of 2008.
The review also finds 39 outstanding issues relating to Lorenzo, 13 of which are colour-coded as red – requiring immediate work. Among these critical concerns were clinical safety and iSoft’s ability to plan and estimate how long its software development would take.
The review had been compiled in February following a profit warning issued in January by iSoft, which warned profits from the NPfIT would be much lower than expected due to delays in delivery of the software.
Investigation
More trouble could lie ahead for iSoft now as the UK’s financial regulator has launched an official investigation into the “accounting irregularities” first revealed by Deloitte in the firm’s accounts of 2004 and 2005.
It is expected the Financial Services Authority will centre on whether the firm misled investors over how much it had earned.
iSoft said the problems mainly related to the firm’s revenues which had to be restated due to the change in accounting policy.
On Wednesday, British MPs stepped up pressure on the Department of Trade and Industry to also investigate the company.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has put his own personal store into finalising the state of the art Mater Dei hospital, not least by relieving health minister Lawrence Deguara of the responsibility and see to it himself that the project gets finished on time after numerous delays and burgeoning costs.
Gonzi will now cut the inauguration ribbon on 1 July, 2007 – his fifty-fourth birthday – but the installation of the first phase of the IT system at Mater Dei will be crucial for his timing.
£343 million loss
On Friday iSoft reported a full year pre-tax loss of GBP343.8 million.
Within hours of posting its financial results, which had to be published this Friday or risk being delisted from the London Stock Exchange, shares which had previously plunged to 40p started climbing steadily.
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