Sydney, July 4, 2008 (ABN Newswire) - iSOFT (LON:IOT) has won a contract extension with NHS Supply Chain to host its e-commerce and logistics applications until 2010.

The contract extends the ten-year partnership with NHS Supply Chain, which began with its predecessor NHS Logistics. Operated by DHL Logistics, NHS Supply Chain manages over four million NHS orders a year and aims to provide savings of over £1 billion to the NHS over ten years.

Overseen by the NHS Business Services Authority, NHS Supply Chain delivers equipment and supplies to 600 NHS hospitals, GP surgeries and other healthcare organisations from six regional distribution centres. Customers can order goods and services online from a catalogue of 500,000 different products ranging from medical and surgical supplies and equipment to food, furniture, and office supplies. Its e-commerce services include e-trading, e-ordering, e-cataloguing, e-billing, and online forecasting.

iSOFT provides a fully hosted managed service and a dual data centre operation offering total resilience. Applications are run in tandem at two separate data centres to guarantee a disaster-tolerant solution.

The warehouse management and distribution applications are developed and supported by IBA subsidiary iB Solutions under a separate contract.

Paul Richards, managing director of iSOFT UK and Ireland, said: "We have an enviable record of providing a consistently reliable service over many years. Importantly, the long-standing relationship with NHS Supply Chain is built on a true partnership in which we constantly review and develop our service model with the customer to ensure we continually meet its evolving business requirements."

Based in Alfreton in Derbyshire, NHS Supply Chain employs around 1,700 staff at eight locations. Each year, it supplies to over 250,000 NHS requisition points, delivers to over 10,000 locations, services 100,000 patients in their homes, and manages four million NHS orders servicing 30 million order lines.

iSOFT is an IBA Health Group (ASX:IBA) company.

About NHS Supply Chain

NHS Supply Chain provides customer-focused healthcare products and supply chain services to the National Health Service (NHS) and other healthcare organisations, enabling trusts, hospitals and other organisations to focus on patient care.

Our aim is to provide over £1 billion savings to the NHS over a 10 year period so that resources are released for trusts to focus on quality frontline patient care, manage costs and achieve sustainable value.

We provide end-to-end supply chain services incorporating procurement, logistics, e-commerce, and customer and supplier support for a range of 500,000 in-scope products for more than 600 healthcare organisations.