Qld Health seeks telco services panel

Queensland Health is seeking to replace its existing telecommunications providers with a new telecommunications panel of companies to provide telco products and support for the next three years.

(Littman image by Katrin Morenz, CC BY-SA 2.0)

According to tender documents published yesterday, Queensland Health is seeking to replace its existing providers, whose contracts are either expiring or have been extended on a temporary basis.

The department is seeking a consortium of telecommunications industry companies including manufacturers, industry channel partners, suppliers and service support providers to connect the department's 70,000 employees over 800 sites. The tender documents state that Queensland Health is seeking to leverage existing fixed and wireless telecommunications infrastructure to carry voice, data, picture, video and diagnostic information across the department's network statewide and also plans to expand its e-health programs in the next three to five years.

"[Queensland Health] will progressively implement convergence and new technologies based on business benefit, with an increasing trend to the provision of quality of service management and support for e-health and telehealth strategic goals," the tender documents state.

Companies will initially be appointed to the panel for three years, with the option of remaining for five. Applications close for the tender on 16 May 2011.

Queensland Health was shrouded in controversy last year, when its SAP-based system implemented with help from IBM in March encountered problems shortly after implementation, leading to many employees being either under-paid, over-paid or not paid at all.

At the time, Queensland Health threatened to cancel its contract with IBM; however, the department has since made amends with IBM and has implemented its own localised payroll system.