For the first time a cloud-based marketplace for healthcare products, Edge4Health, has gone live for NHS trusts.
The platform allows healthcare staff to buy thousands of goods and services every day, ranging from syringes to pacemakers, laptops to imaging equipment.
Developed by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) and technology company Virtualstock, Edge4Health’s technology brings together thousands of suppliers and NHS organisations onto one platform, designed to reduce errors and delays in ordering and invoice payment.
Whether direct from the supplier or through the NHS Supply Chain catalogue, NHS staff can select products and services that have been pre-approved by hospital procurement teams, meaning compliance is built-in and spend is more visible.
The first organisations to go live with the platform were Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Edge4Health has been developed in partnership with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, led by NHS South of England Procurement Services, a hosted service of the trust.
David Morris, managing director at NHS SBS, said: “In the NHS, lives depend, quite literally, on having the right product, in the right place, at the right time. Yet until now, the systems to support this have been complex and difficult to use. With Edge4Health, many of the benefits we’re used to as consumers will become available to the NHS for the first time. The meticulous work that has gone into building and refining a digital platform, which can benefit hundreds of individual NHS organisations, has delivered a robust solution that will transform NHS procurement for many years to come.”