Five NHS Trust hospitals are piloting HL-hybris e-product information management business platform, developed by software vendor hybris’ partner, Healthlogistics, to access electronic catalogue, contract and price data from suppliers.
The hospitals — Basingstoke & North Hampshire, Chelsea and Westminster, King’s College Hospital, Royal Berkshire and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts – have integrated the software in their purchasing system to access data for about one million products from 600 NHS suppliers.
Peter Elwin, director of Healthlogistics.co.uk, said: “HL-hybris perfectly meets NHS Trusts’ requirement to have approved and filtered product, contract and net price data in the heart of their purchasing systems. Data security is a key element of the solution which is why this enterprise software has been selected.”
HL-hybris is expected to enable the trusts to use accurate supplier item codes, descriptions and net prices in purchase orders; validate data against NHS Trusts’ requirements; and have clear visibility of all contracts, agreements and net prices.
Founded in 2003, Oxford-based Healthlogistics specialises in providing e-procurement software for the UK healthcare market. The company, in partnership with Etesius, offers purchasing expenditure information to NHS Trusts by developing databases using purchasing and financial source data of the hospitals.
Healthlogistics expects to make HL-hybris available to all NHS Trusts in the UK by January 2009. This will give the trusts access to the common e-catalogue data in HL-hybris, along with their own contract and net price data.
Andrew Piscina, UK country manager for hybris, said: “NHS Trusts increasingly require product data accuracy across their entire supply chain, from identification of patient requirement through to treatment, and a system that is able to deliver this. Hybris is delighted to be providing the core software for this project and technical support to Healthlogistics.”
