Flu jab IT system to be ‘switched off’ weeks before vaccine programme starts
All tech support for flu and covid vaccinations will be switched off on Thursday after NHS England decided against extending its contract with its supplier in favour of developing an in-house system, according to HSJ.
NHSE last week told suppliers System C and Graphnet it would not extend the contract for the National Immunisation Management Service – just one week before the contract ends.
NIMS, provided by the two British firms in partnership with NHS South Central and West Commissioning Support Unit, has been used for the last three years to manage the vaccination programme.
Its functionalities include a single data store holding vaccination records for more than 60 million people, a call and recall service that can identify and contact groups of eligible individuals according to age and clinical priority, and reporting and analysing of vaccination activity in “near real time”.
NHSE informed System C it would not extend the contract last Thursday – five working days before it was due to expire, according to a message from System C to customers, seen by HSJ.
In its message, System C said: “This means that all functionality, including the NIMS application programming interface links to third party booking systems, all outgoing feeds and extracts, NIMS dashboards and the point of vaccination data capture application will stop working after 31 August.”
There is currently “significant usage” of the system by GPs and trusts, which means NIMS users “may need to take action to deal with the retirement of the system” – the message stated.
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Source: HSJ, 30 August 2023