CSW Health goes into administration

Tags: BT child Community London LPfIT Mental Health PCTs RiO Solution South Summary Care Record

04 Nov 2008

Health IT firm CSW Group Ltd, the owners of CSW Health, the Oxford-based specialist in XML-based software applications, has been placed into administration.

The development leaves the future support of a system used by ten London primary care trusts to monitor child vaccinations unclear. It also appears to throw a spanner into plans to develop an Individual Health Record in Wales.

On Friday, the administrators of CSW placed an advert in the Financial Times stating that the company is in administration and seeking potential buyers.

CSW was contracted by BT, the local service provider for London, to develop the Child Health Interim Application (CHIA), to bridge a gap between one child health system being withdrawn and a strategic solution being ready.

It will be required until the PCTs that use it can be migrated to the RiO community system. This will not happen until next year.

BT, the local service provider for London, told E-Health Insider that it had been in contact with “both the current CSW management team and also with the administrators and will maintain dialogue daily during this period of uncertainty.”

The company added: “BT's intent is to safeguard the support we currently receive from CSW for the services we provide for the London LSP Programme and we have conveyed that to LPfIT and the administrators.”

Problems arising from use of CHIA were first reported by PCTs in 2006, leading to falls in immunisation rates in some parts of London.

Earlier this month, EHI Primary Care reported that three PCTs in the capital had logged CHIA as a risk. The Health Protection Agency has also reported problems with supply of childhood immunisation data from PCTs.

The problems at CSW also raises doubts about the already late-running IHA project in Wales.

In a statement to E-Health Insider, the Welsh NHS IT agency, Informing Healthcare, said it had been advised that CSW, its contractor for the record project in North West and South West Wales, is now in administration.

“This is a regrettable situation and disappointing to all those involved in this project. We acknowledge the commitment made by CSW to the project and the external circumstances that have led to this situation. We would also like to acknowledge the hard work put in by the staff in the NHS communities so far.”

Informing Healthcare said it was now looking at its options: “We are now are actively looking at other options to complete the project, which remains a top priority for Informing Healthcare.”

CSW is best known for its Case Notes electronic health record product. Elements of the software are incorporated into the National Programme for IT in the NHS Summary Care Record and into other key services of the NHS Spine.

In 2007, CSW was named SME Organisation of the Year at the British Computer Society IT Awards.

Last year, Tower Hamlets Care Community won the BT e-Health Insider Awards Community and Mental Health Care ICT Team of the Year, for its implementation of an electronic single assessment process system supplied by BT and CSW.

Over the past few years CSW had grown rapidly and won business in the US and in fields beyond healthcare.

Jon Hoeksma

Reader's Comments

Is the credit crunch to blame?

04 Nov 08 17:11

It seems bizzare that an up and coming supplier to the NHS (winning many awards) has now gone into financial administration? Don't these companies have financial checks before hand..? Assume the credit crunch is to blame.....!

Not only does it leave parts of the England in a bit of a pickle, it leaves the NHS in Wales (IHC) with a major dilemma. The North Wales community is now in a bit of limbo with their EHR, and of course the plans for the IHR nationally. However, if you look on the bright side at least there is another supplier in Wales providing the same functionality i.e. Gwent EHR - http://www.e-health-insider.com/News/3186/graphnet_complete_gwent_out-of-hours_pilot - The question is what happens next? We watch this space...

Spotlight on Wales

05 Nov 08 08:11

Wales has escaped a lot of attention as the focus has tended to be on the struggling NPfIT in England. But the news that CSW has gone into administration will perhaps enable us to see just how good Informing Healthcare's programme (and risk) management arrangements are.

Wales seems to churn out good news stories on a regular basis but there is a body of opinion that says that - for such a small place - the rate of progress has been painfully slow.

DR in place ?

06 Nov 08 09:11

I would hope all the relavant organisations have an escrow in place then, otherwise they'll be at the mercy of the admins...

Cash flow in the real world and the NHS

06 Nov 08 09:11

"...It seems bizzare that an up and coming supplier to the NHS (winning many awards) has now gone into financial administration? Don't these companies have financial checks before hand..? Assume the credit crunch is to blame.....!"

This assumes that the businesses customers have paid for services they have received - ever wondered why the NHS pays £500 for a chair and everyone else pays £130 for the same?

The NHS always has been appalling at paying bills on time - and still is. As an example : I've been waiting for over six months for payment for services I delivered to an NHS trust in the South East...and it looks like I'm going to have to take them to court to get paid.

It's not always the business that is to blame - it can be a perfectly viable business - but the assumtpion is that it is normal to get paid for services delivered - not in "NHS World" it would seem in some cases.

Credit crunch

06 Nov 08 13:11

Is this a sign of venture capital drying up?

Good luck

06 Nov 08 14:11

Obviously an incredibly difficult time for an organisation and its employees that has been clearly committed and recognised for the work they have done.

I have had no involvement whatsoever with this company but I fear that the challenging market within which they and others operate has had a bearing on ther current plight and given the growth that has been reported for the company in the last couple of years may be as a direct result of overtrading made more difficult by the current financial climate.

Given the huge amounts expended over recent years on the National Programme that appear (at least) to have been wasted, one can only hope that a lifeline is exended to this organisation in order that they can continue with the work and major projects underway.

It is easy and frankly chirlish to suggest that just having financial checks beforehand safeguards projects. Many will have also heard the original NPfIT DG in 2002 state quite clearly that the reason for offering large LSP contracts to established players was in order to safeguard delivery however recent history has informed us that that approach is also unreliable and probably a complete fallacy.

If High Street banks established over centuries and having unfettered access to sophisticated financial markets can't survive without Govt. involvement and Tax Payer handouts, surely there is also a duty in difficult times to support innovative companies to fulfil their potential where that exists.

Let's see movement by DoH and the Welsh Assembly to support this case which can only be a matter of a few million pounds based on the size of the company and surely will be less costly (including opportunity cost) of finding another supplier to complete the work.

I trust this won't be seen by this readership as a naive view (I appreciate that I have oversimplified the case) and would welcome other views on how we can ensure that innovation isn't just lost to history.

Let's hope the administrators can find a suitable buyer or rescue package.

A great shame

06 Nov 08 20:11

It would be a great loss to the industry if they were to go. I feel worst for the extremely talented group of people who worked there and are likely to be out of the job.

The NHS would be significantly worse off for the loss of a British, R&D lead forward looking supplier and the people behind it. I hope CSW finds a way through this.

This demise was inevitable

25 Nov 08 11:11

It's a great pity, but almost inevitable, that the leading UK specialists in electronic patient records have ended up in administration. The costs of sustaining an ongoing business as an IT supplier to UK health are simply incompatible with the business volumes obtainable from a fickle market that expects its suppliers to have bottomless pockets, to jump on command and to exercise endless patience.

CSW's largest single customer was BT, a company that some might suggest from its performance (or lack of it) as the London LSP, should quickly join Accenture and Fujitsu in exiting from NPfIT and the politics and incompetencies that seem to have pervaded that programme. About one hundred people lost jobs at CSW. While the Case Notes intellectual property rights might well be a realisable asset for the administrator, don't expect a new licensor to fare any better with Case Notes in health than did CSW.

(post edited by EHI)