New software licensing agreement keeps costs down for health sector

Victorian health services now have access to Citrix – a virtualisation software used for hospital administration and patient records – at a significantly reduced cost under a new agreement coordinated by the Department of Health and HealthShare Victoria (HSV).

The technology, which allows hospital staff to access core applications from a variety of devices, was previously supplied under a state purchase agreement which lapsed earlier this year.

The Victorian health sector is a heavy user of Citrix technology as it allows seamless access to patient records.

With health services facing steep increases in licensing fees, the Department of Health reached out to HSV for assistance with the new agreement.

HSV Head of IT Sourcing John McKinlay said the team was able to achieve a significant cost reduction on the previous state contract through a bulk purchase licensing arrangement with 40,000 licenses.

Director of Health Technology Services at the Department of Health Phil Mann said the new agreement was beneficial for its cost-saving element and because health services now had unlimited access to licenses.

“This is important for health services with fluctuating staff levels due to seasonal requirements and intern intakes. Now when a health service submits a request for a new license it can be issued the same day.

In the past, health services would have had to procure additional licenses or go to market depending on the volumes required.”

Phil said partnering with HSV was crucial because of their expertise in bulk purchase agreements and contract negotiations.

“We couldn’t have done this without HSV – health services would have had to sign up individually without getting access to the benefit of the bulk purchase agreement. HSV also has the knowledge and understanding of technology contracts that we needed.”

The agreement provides Citrix licenses for many large metropolitan and regional health services such as Monash Health, Barwon Health, Austin and Western Health.

Chief Technology Officer at Eastern Health Justin Francis said the new agreement gave staff access to a whole suite of products.

“We now have VPN access and cloud monitoring for example, which means we can monitor our Citrix environment more closely. We can see client responses and more easily determine whether there’s an issue with the network.”

“It means our staff have a better experience and we can manage the network appropriately, he said.