Tasmania's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will purchase 1000 thin client application delivery software licences to support the delivery of two new state-wide hospital information systems for patient administration and pharmaceuticals management.

The patient administration system, i.Patient Manager, and the pharmacy system, i.Pharmacy, from vendor iSoft, both require thin client application delivery to operate, according to the DHHS.

With 658 Citrix Presentation Server licences used by some six different software applications under "decentralized and disparate licensing, maintenance, and technical support agreements", the department is also eyeing the option to consolidate the existing licences under one licence with the new purchase.

The new contract will be for a period of three years and follows other recent IT initiatives aimed at improving the management of Tasmania's health information.

A common licence, maintenance and upgrade, and technical support agreement should streamline administration of the thin client software.

Of the existing 658 thin client licences, used for Financial, HR, records management, and oncology applications, most are due for renewal this year and some have already expired.

The new contract is expected to begin from June 2008 and continue until May 2011.