London, UK: 16th October 2006: SunGard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability and business continuity services, announced it is hosting a range of applications for In Practice Systems Ltd (INPS), a leading supplier of high quality clinical management systems.
INPS develops, supplies and supports ‘Vision’, a complete primary care patient administration system, available to over 2,000 GP practices in the UK. The system is hosted by SunGard, and is provided by INPS as a managed service to Primary Care Trusts across England. It supports key National Programme for IT (NPfIT) functions, such as electronic prescriptions and “choose and book”, allowing GPs to schedule appointments online with hospital consultants. INPS selected SunGard on account of what it regarded as SunGard’s unparalleled expertise in Information Availability (the process of keeping organisations’ mission critical people and information connected when it matters), supported by a network of highly robust Tier-IV technology centres.
SunGard is currently hosting the data of over 1,000 INPS users on 45 INPS servers (a further 16 are to be added later this year) in its Tier IV technology centres. Doctors access the data from their practices via the secure NHS private telecommunications network (N3), which ranges between 512Kb and 2Mb depending on the size of the practice.
Russell Blackmore, IT director at INPS, commented: “The specifications for NPfIT require that medical information be stored centrally – so we were looking for the highest levels of availability and security from our solutions provider. SunGard impressed us with its considerable experience in Information Availability, supported by what we see as a truly unparalleled technical infrastructure. Given the public’s sensitivities about data protection and information security, SunGard is well suited for our needs.”
“What’s more, we’re confident that SunGard will be able to support our growing business, as more and more Primary Care Trusts and practices sign up for our hosted systems,” Blackmore added.
Under the National Programme for IT, all NHS Primary Care Trusts will have to link their data to centralised, hosted solutions. Twenty percent of the INPS customer base is already using hosted solutions, and most new business is being deployed on the hosted service. Therefore INPS needed a partner that could offer it genuine scaleable solutions to mirror its customers’ transition.
Keith Tilley, UK managing director and SVP Europe, SunGard Availability Services, said: “Our capacity assists INPS in meeting the growing demand for managed solutions within its Primary Care customer base. As a business we are pleased to increase our activity within the NHS and the National Programme for IT in particular.”
Tilley went on to say: “We are seeing more and more customers approach us to give them the sheer resilience that providing ‘software-as-a-service’ demands. We are expecting to see many more agreements such as this in the near future.”
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About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services is the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability solutions, helping to ensure that more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe have access to their business-critical information systems. With over 3 million square feet of hardened facilities, SunGard offers a complete range of Information Availability solutions that include managed IT, professional and recovery services. SunGard provides services to support an always-on production environment, as well as over 30 technology platforms to support customers who require a traditional 24-48 hour recovery time frame. SunGard also has technology and systems management services for application and data center outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software. For more information about SunGard Availability Services, visit www.sungard.co.uk or call 0800 143 413.
In May 2006, SunGard Availability Services (UK) Limited was recognised at the Business Continuity Awards as Service Provider of the Year, an accolade that has been awarded to SunGard five times in the awards’ eight-year history. At the awards, SunGard was also recognised as having the Most Innovative Product of the Year and Consultant of the Year, as well as supporting the Most Effective Recovery of the Year.