23 May 2025
Congratulations to Business Services Organisation (BSO) Procurement and Logistics Service (PaLS) Pathology team who achieved the Highly Commended award in the Procurement Delivery category at the UK National GO Awards held in Liverpool on Wednesday 21st May 2025.
The Pathology team won the award for their procurement project to standardise blood gas analysers across Health and Social Care (HSC). The project was carried out in collaboration with the HSC Trusts.
Learn more about the procurement project:
The procurement was undertaken to address a critical and growing risk of outdated blood gas analysers operating beyond their lifecycle with equipment breakdowns, reagent wastage, and inconsistent training posed safety risks and operational inefficiencies. With three Trusts listing analyser replacement as a risk register item, a regional procurement was a priority. The objective was to deliver a compliant, collaborative, and sustainable contract for blood gas analysers across Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI).
The procurement sought to:
- Replace legacy equipment with modern, mobile analysers,
- Standardise devices, consumables, and procedures across all Trusts,
- Integrate with ICT systems and digital training platforms,
- Ensure scalability for future training and onboarding,
- Roll out implementation in a phased, Trust-specific approach, and
- Withstand legal scrutiny while delivering value for money.
Standardisation was a core goal. The new solution was to eliminate legacy variation in analyser models and practice, streamlining maintenance, support, and training. The analysers were to be supplied on mobile trollies with integrated Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and scanners, enabling flexible ward deployment. Clinicians rotating across Trusts would benefit from consistent user interfaces and shared Standing Operating Procedures (SOP), with the hope of reducing risk and improving efficiency.
Critical success factors included robust pre-market engagement, alignment with Public Contracts Regulations 2015, and cross-functional collaboration to design a legally sound specification. The use of a single supplier has already delivered consistency, improved patient safety, and enhanced workforce efficiency.
This contract sets a new benchmark for regional point of care procurements in Northern Ireland in terms of governance and outcomes. The successful supplier is delivering the contract regionally across all five Trusts: Belfast, Northern, Southern, South Eastern, and Western. The implementation was managed in three six-week phases, led by Trust Point of Care teams in coordination with ICT and approximately 8000 members of clinical staff were trained during the period.
Valued at £20 million, the contract highlights the scale and complexity involved in delivering such a significant transformation across regional healthcare services.
Congratulations to everyone involved from all your colleagues in BSO.
Learn more about BSO PaLS here – Procurement and Logisitc Service
Pictured below: Amanda Lynch, Roisin McDonald, Linda O’Hare, Denise Cunningham, Lauren Moore
