Development, collaboration and innovation at the top of the agenda
For technology entrepreneurs and business owners, selling into the public sector can be hugely challenging – especially at a time of high demand.
How does our Senior Category Manager for ICT, Alison Petrie, help these firms navigate their way into the market while ensuring public bodies find the right suppliers?
She told Health Tech World about how collaboration, the pandemic and shifting NHS trends are reshaping our work.
Alison said that with the formation of Integrated Care Systems and recent pandemic challenges across the NHS, the opportunity for development, collaboration and innovation had never been more important.
She said: “The NHS agenda for ICT, whether being delivered locally, regionally or nationally is under focus and it remains strategically important that NOE CPC is at the forefront of these developments over the coming months and years.
“As an organisation and the ICT category within, we are continuously adapting our knowledge of the ICT market to inform our own category strategy and objectives. This is to ultimately support our procurement and IT colleagues across the NHS in achieving their local ICT objectives, which includes innovations desired by supplier markets and innovation being developed internally across the NHS.”
Alison said NOE CPC’s ICT category had adapted to its customers’ needs during the pandemic by helping trusts locate the goods and services it needed for home working and the wider IT environment, including end user devices for the front line, infrastructure adaptations and developments which needed to be deployed at short notice.
Alison said: “Due to the size and culture of NOE CPC, we were fortunate in being able to maintain a sense of agility during the challenging and more reactive periods of the pandemic by quickly adapting our focus and resources to support the needs of our NHS procurement colleagues which changed from day to day.”
NOE CPC is one of the four NHS procurement hubs that collaborate to form the NHS Procurement in Partnership (NHS PiP).
Alison said: “As PiP we are continuously working with our members and the wider NHS to inform and engage in areas where collaboration is in the best interest of the NHS.
“In the NHS digital space, the hubs continue to represent PiP as we work with wider stakeholders to consider the roadmap for digital collaboration with partners as appropriate such as Crown Commercial Services and NHS England and Improvement among others.”
Alison said there could be a misconception that public sector procurement came with a lot of red tape and time constraints.
She said: “At NOE CPC we constantly seek to break down these barriers with good and consistent communication with new and existing suppliers to simplify processes and communication channels, while complying with the necessary regulations.
“We try to make our services and framework agreements easily accessible to both bidding suppliers and subsequent customers, promoting the benefits and USPs of using NOE CPC to all stakeholders.
“An example of this would be the recently launched NOE CPC Quick Quote tool under our IT Hardware and Services Framework which enables customers to interact with awarded suppliers to quickly and consistently request direct quotations for their procurement needs.”
Suppliers can find out more about NOE CPC at www.noecpc.nhs.uk/suppliers and contact our helpdesk for further information: enquiries@noecpc.nhs.uk
You can read the interview with Alison in full at https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/noe-cpc-driving-ict-collaboration-and-innovation-into-public-health/