Virtualstock chosen by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

The way the NHS is purchasing goods and services is changing.

A number of NHS organisations have selected The Edge4Health as their new and intuitive online eMarketplace.

And Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICH), as part of the Shelford Group, is the latest to implement the platform.

The Shelford Group is a collection of trusts comprised of England’s leading NHS multi-specialty academic healthcare organisations and is in the middle of its rollout programme of the Edge4Health.

The Edge4Health provides a comprehensive, online, end-to-end PIM2Pay platform delivering a solution that spans the entire product lifecycle – from product information management (PIM) to payment (eInvoice).

The platform is designed to meet exacting healthcare & GS1 eCommerce standards, including a consumer-style experience to accelerate the pace of adoption.

The Edge4Health is in a great position to help both providers and suppliers improve the end-to-end supply chain in a quest to create the perfect order and reduce inefficiencies and waste for all parties

Built upon agile, disruptive, cloud-based technology, its ‘responsive design’ enables full functionality to be delivered online, to device and mobile, supporting and improving productivity at the front-line of the NHS for both trusts and suppliers.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust selected the platform so it could manage all products in one location, providing a holistic view of its suppliers’ product ranges, catalogues and prices.

Denis Kelliher, the trust’s head of procurement, said: “We reviewed the whole market and felt The Edge4Health offered the best solution for procurement staff to manage price variation, contract compliance and improve efficiency.

“As part of the Carter Review we have been set a target to ensure 80% of spend is captured via a catalogue solution.

“With The Edge4Health, we believe we can maintain and exceed our current percentage spend on catalogue.

“With over 350-plus suppliers already loaded onto the platform, we have access to current and new suppliers in one easy-to-manage location.”

The platform will also offer suppliers to the NHS a single marketplace to display rich product data such as specifications, images, videos, articles and importantly matching their attributes to the Department of Health’s Global Data Source requirements.

A single place to manage price files and contracts will also offer suppliers an enhanced channel of communication directly into the NHS buying and sourcing teams.

James Thirkill, vice president and general manager of healthcare and public sector at Virtualstock, said: “The Edge4Health is in a great position to help both providers and suppliers improve the end-to-end supply chain in a quest to create the perfect order and reduce inefficiencies and waste for all parties.

“The online marketplace supports the drive to increase consolidated procurement and improve compliance.”