E-auction shaves £4.5m off NHS hardware bill

The Office of Government Commerce is promoting the use of e-auctions in the public sector

A group of UK NHS trusts has cut IT hardware procurement costs by nearly a third using an online auction, it was claimed today. 

The two-hour e-auction, organised by the Coordinated Procurement Division of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), and run by TradingPartners, saw 11 IT hardware suppliers battle to get the business of 137 NHS Trusts, grouped into six regional consortia.

Between them, these consortia account for nearly a third of all the desktops and laptops needed by the NHS over the next 18 months.

The auction achieved projected savings worth nearly 30 per cent of the trusts' bill for PC equipment, equating to a reduction from £16m to £11.5m. The total package includes over 21,000 desktop PCs and nearly 4,500 laptops.

The event was led and hosted by Hull and East Yorkshire NHS Trust, which originated the idea, and co-ordinated by its procurement manager Malcolm Tell.

John Oughton, chief executive of the OGC, said: "This is a great example of how the public sector can work together to achieve savings for the taxpayer that can be ploughed back into frontline services.

"The OGC promotes the use of e-auctions in the public sector and we can provide guidance on how they can help the public sector meet their efficiency targets."

Chirag Shah, chief executive at TradingPartners, added: "We were very pleased with this latest example of how e-auctions can deliver results for the public sector.

"This represents a small fraction of spending on IT hardware in the whole of the public sector. I hope other public sector bodies will see what can be achieved and take advantage themselves of these kind of savings."