Secondary Care

Nine integrated care systems purchase procurement data tool

Nine integrated care systems (ICS) have awarded contracts to AdviseInc for its procurement and spend data analysis tool.

The company said the solution provides complete visibility of spend data and non-pay spend across 100,000 suppliers and over 1.5 million products. It cites opportunities for NHS organisations to save between £250k and £5m a year, by using its price benchmarking, price index and catalogue checking tool.

The ICSs signing up include: Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICS; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICS; Hertfordshire and West Essex ICS; Cheshire and Merseyside ICS; Leicestershire and Rutland ICS; Mid and South Essex ICS and Leicester; Norfolk and Waveney ICS; North West London ICS; and Suffolk and North East Essex ICS.

Commenting on the tool, Lee Jackson, Managing Director at North West London Procurement Services, said: “The level of analysis and insight that AdviseInc provides has allowed us to really drill down into our data, identify spend saving opportunities and deliver actionable insights for our procurement teams.”

Rob Webb, Director of Procurement at ICS, Bath Swindon and Wiltshire ICS, added: “We use the Procurement Dashboard to identify opportunities, to see if other trusts are getting a better price than us on certain items. We also use it for a lot of operational elements, for instance, looking at catalogue compliance and looking at where we can improve contractual coverage, so it’s not just on the savings element.

“It gives us a level of information we otherwise wouldn’t have; across our ICS, each of the three trusts use different finance and accounting systems, but we can put the data from each of them into the Procurement Dashboard and make comparisons, and look at the variance in prices between them.”