Health NZ has opened a second major cloud procurement under its Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP), seeking providers of public and private cloud platforms to support the organisation’s large-scale infrastructure modernisation programme.
The latest procurement notice is separate from the Cloud Implementer Panel RFP released earlier this month, which is focused on workload migration, application transformation, systems integration and related implementation services – while the new Cloud Platforms Panel is aimed at suppliers providing underlying cloud infrastructure and hosting environments.
According to the latest RFP, the Cloud Platforms Panel would establish “a national panel of qualified Cloud Platform Providers to provide optimised public and private cloud platforms and workload hosting services.”
“Platform Panel members will play a critical role in providing foundational cloud infrastructure and platform capabilities to strengthen and optimise core infrastructure, address digital risks, and enhance the health system’s digital maturity,” the document states.
Health NZ said its current digital infrastructure presented “material risks to service continuity” because of limitations in the underlying hosting environment and the prevalence of unsupported platforms.
“While parts of the environment reflect legacy and fragmented technology, the primary issue is the reliability and resilience of infrastructure supporting critical clinical systems,” the RFP states.
The procurement forms part of Health NZ’s wider Cloud Modernisation Programme, which sits within the HDIP and is being delivered through the Centre for Digital Modernisation of Health (CDMH).
According to the RFP, the cloud modernisation programme would establish two supplier panels with distinct functions: the Cloud Platforms Panel and the Cloud Implementer Panel.
“The Programme intends to migrate and consolidate server workloads, to the extent this is possible, from legacy District Health Board (DHB) on campus data rooms, AoG and IaaS, over disparate and disconnected tenancies,” the document states.
Health NZ said workloads would be moved to “an appropriate and optimal operating environment”, expected to include a mix of national private cloud and public cloud platforms.
“The private cloud capability will have a central national core, but will also extend to critical health locations, delivering self-contained and standardised platforms to support services requiring local survivability.”
The RFP states that providers must be capable of operating cloud platforms at enterprise scale, including hosting or managing customer environments containing several thousand workloads.
Suppliers offering private cloud services must also be able to provide national coverage across Health NZ sites “from Invercargill through to Kaitaia” and demonstrate experience operating in certified all-of-government datacentres .
Health NZ said it was seeking providers capable of delivering secure and resilient platforms while supporting future technologies including artificial intelligence and precision health.
“We need our panel members to provide advanced platform and technical capabilities that enable emerging healthcare technologies such as artificial intelligence and precision health – to support Health NZ’s evolution toward innovative care models and next-generation healthcare delivery approaches.”
The panel agreement will have an initial four-year term, with two potential three-year extensions.
The RFP was released on 15 June and closes on 16 July.
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