Western Australia Department of Health (WA Health) has extended its alliance with French IT company Atos by another five years, for the provision of hybrid cloud services within its public health system.
For this contract renewal with its ICT service provider Health Support Services (HSS), WA Health invested A$242m ($158.58m).
It will see Atos offering managed services, hybrid cloud as well as core infrastructure services.
Atos will provide technology solutions, which are customised to facilitate the digitalisation of health records and systems, and collaborate with HSS to support complex, large-scale IT projects.
HSS chief information officer Jonathan Smith said: “Together, we have already successfully delivered the largest application re-platforming programme undertaken by WA Health, which was completed on time and met our requirements in terms of security and compliancy. We are looking forward to continuing our work with Atos to help implement our WA Health digital strategy.”
This association started in 2019, when Atos was tasked with digitalising WA Health ICT systems.
The original contract covered hybrid cloud orchestration, private cloud, managed public cloud, co-location and managed services for over 2,000 servers, more than 1,000 applications, and a fully managed Oracle Cloud platform.
It replaced WA Health’s centralised computing contract with Fujitsu, and was aimed at improving operational processes, lowering expenses, and boosting the patient experience.
The transition was intended to help WA Health scale on-demand operational costs, offer services with a minimum amount of process overhead.
It also enabled the health system to use new technology without carrying out massive infrastructure platform upgrades.
The migration to the hybrid cloud system was part of WA Health's infrastructure replacement project HealthNext.
Atos Australia and New Zealand managing director James Berry stated: “From the very beginning of our partnership we have forged a strong relationship, collaborating closely to bring about HealthNext and continually enhance HSS’ IT and communications infrastructure. Today, we are excited to continue to bring the best of people and technology together to make HSS successful in delivering WA Health’s digital strategy.”
