Health New Zealand has opened new digital infrastructure opportunities for major hospital developments and national system monitoring, while postponing a planned procurement to modernise its inter-site network.
Health NZ is establishing a pre-qualified supplier list of Digital Infrastructure System Integrators (DISIs) to support major hospital redevelopment projects, with the first intake closing on September 11.
The supplier list will initially support the Pihi Kaha Whangārei Hospital redevelopment and Whakatupuranga Nelson Hospital project, with Health NZ also able to use it for future major hospital redevelopments subject to approval.
DISIs will be responsible for procuring, installing, commissioning and supporting the active digital infrastructure and digital facility systems required for the new hospitals, as well as integrating systems across the wider digital environment.
The scope includes networks, compute and storage, security, unified communications and audiovisual systems, along with digital facility systems such as real-time location services, digital wayfinding and patient engagement systems.
DISIs will also integrate with Health NZ applications and clinical systems and with major medical and biomedical equipment, although applications including patient administration and electronic medical record systems will remain the responsibility of Health NZ.
The supplier list will initially run for five years and remain open to new applicants. Inclusion does not guarantee suppliers work, with individual DISI appointments to be made through the relevant hospital project’s main contractor and subject to Health NZ approval.
National monitoring capability
Health NZ is separately seeking market feedback on a national enterprise observability capability, with an RFI closing on September 25.
Tender documents show its digital environment includes about 867 unique applications across more than 1300 service records, several thousand workloads and around 650 locations, with Health NZ saying monitoring coverage varies significantly and does not consistently provide a consolidated view of critical systems.
Health NZ ran a limited pilot using an incumbent technology between January and June and is now seeking information on available technologies and services, deployment approaches, operating models and commercial options. The RFI will inform future investment and potential procurement but will not directly select a supplier.
Network procurement postponed
Meanwhile, Health NZ has postponed a planned RFP for its National Network Inter-Site Programme while it develops a revised procurement timetable.
Health NZ previously went to market with an RFI after identifying capacity issues and significant technical debt across its network infrastructure, which it said was preventing the network from scaling effectively.
It says feedback from that process highlighted the need to prioritise the inter-site domain, sequence delivery to reduce risk and provide clear end-to-end accountability for connectivity.
A subsequent RFP has been postponed while Health NZ develops a revised timeline aligned with the HDIP Implementation Plan and All-of-Government digital direction.
A further update on procurement timing will be published through GETS once confirmed.
Earlier opportunities
The activity comes amid a wider run of Health NZ digital procurement under its 10-year Health Digital Investment Plan.
Health NZ opened an RFP for a Cloud Implementer Panel in June to support workload migration and application modernisation and subsequently went to market seeking providers for a separate Cloud Platforms Panel.
Health NZ currently manages more than 12,000 servers spread across on-premises, infrastructure-as-a-service and public cloud environments.
The cloud procurements followed a future procurement notice issued last November flagging a significant portfolio of long-term opportunities under the HDIP.
Health NZ is also preparing to go to market for between $50 million and $100 million of technology for its national Radiology Modernisation Programme, including a national image archive and imaging AI orchestration capability.
Other recent Health NZ technology procurements include an open supplier panel for AI ambient scribes and an RFI exploring AI tools for breast cancer screening.
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