Hospital Trust extends 17-year relationship with IBM to manage IT infrastructure

Bath, UK, 12th December 2008: IBM (NYSE:IBM) and the Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust, which provides health-care to a local population of approximately 500,000 people, today announced a 1-year extension to their 17-year strategic agreement with IBM to manage their Hospital Information System.

The strategic outsourcing contract delivers both IT services and hardware for the support of the Trust's patient database which forms the core of the hospital's clinical support systems. The system ensures reliable patient information is delivered across nearly all hospital departments, enabling clinicians, nurses and support staff to operate more efficiently. The contract extension continues a long-standing relationship between the two organisation and helps offer stability to the Trust during a time of major change within the NHS.

Martyn Howard-Evans, RUH Purchasing Department said “Running hospital systems is, in the truest sense of the words, a mission critical operation. Having the comfort of knowing that our organisation is being supported by the world's largest provider of IT infrastructure is a real comfort. It removes the day to day worry of running crucial IT systems, and let's us focus on what we do best front-line patient care”.

Adrian Hill, IBM NHS Client Manager, added “This demonstrates IBM's continuing commitment to the NHS and is part of the strong portfolio of consulting and technology services that IBM offers to help improve patient centric care, services and support. This system, hosted at a secure facility, provides the industry's highest levels of reliability and availability, essential to supporting a hospital.

The contract was signed in September 2008 and runs from October 2008.

For more information on The Royal United Hospital Bath, NHS Trust, visit http://www.ruh.nhs.uk/