NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has extended its deal to use HICX Solutions’ supplier information management software to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.
It has agreed on a further year for an agreement, originally signed in September 2019 to last one year, to manage risks linked to the UK’s departure from the European Union, and which was then used to respond to the pandemic from April.
The extension has been valued at £220,000 and comes with the option to expand for a further year.
The special health authority, which manages blood donor services in England and transplant services across the UK, has published a voluntary announcement in the Official Journal of the European Union, that says the use of the software “is critical to NHSBT’s ongoing management and mitigation of inbound supply risks related to the end of the [Brexit] transition period and Covid-19”.
It awarded the extension without running a competition, as allowed under public contracts regulations in certain circumstances including urgency resulting from unforeseeable events.
“The extension of the UK departure from the EU and the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic could not have been predicted at the time of the initial award in September 2019,” NHSBT said in the announcement. The original contract was too small for a competitive procurement to be required.
