Queensland healthcare organisation Blue Care has signed a five-year managed services deal with Dimension Data and simultaneously announced ex-Queensland health director of e-Health Wendy Balachandran as its new chief information officer.

Wendy Balachandran:
Blue Care's new CIO
(Credit: Blue Care)

The not-for-profit broad-based healthcare provider, which has 9,800 staff and 260 centres, signed a five-year deal with Dimension Data in November, according to Dimension Data.

The contract will see DiData manage Blue Care's datacentre, network, email and end-user computing needs. The value of the deal has not been disclosed.

The deal with DiData was part of a major IT refresh planned for Blue Care, which included a three-year plan to centralise its application environment which was currently "local-based", according to Greg Masters, Blue Care's chief operating officer. Blue Care has said it would now implement its Procura health management system as a common information platform across the enterprise.

The healthcare provider was in September seeking to appoint a new chief information officer to support this overhaul, who would report to Masters. It has since selected ex-Queensland health director of eHealth, Wendy Balachandran.

Although unrelated, Balachandran's departure from Queensland Health came three months after ex-Queensland health chief information officer Paul Summergreene was replaced by Dr Richard Ashby on orders by the recently appointed director general of the agency Michael Reid — the former director of NSW Health.