Investment of £1M in B-Plan Information Systems

NewMedia SPARK PLC
8 March 2000




  NewMedia SPARK invests £1m in B-Plan Information Systems



NewMedia  SPARK plc ('SPARK') announces that it has  invested
£1,000,000  for  a  15%  equity stake in  B-Plan  Information
Systems  Ltd,  a Manchester-based supplier of  financial  and
information  management software to over 200  NHS  hospitals.
SPARK may invest further funds to take its stake to 22%  over
the next few months.

The  investment  will help to finance the development  of  B-
Plan's  web-based  NHS  financial and  activity  benchmarking
system inSIGHT. This will enable hospitals for the first time
to measure their efficiency against each other using detailed
comparative  data  over  the Internet,  giving  managers  and
clinicians unprecedented control over costs and activity.

B-Plan  was  recently nominated in the Technology Fast  Fifty
Awards  as  one  of the fastest growing IT companies  in  the
North of England.


Professor  Sir Duncan Nichol, Chairman of B-Plan  and  former
Chief Executive of the NHS said today:

     'The health service has been held back for years by lack
     of  quality  information. As the IT  revolution  gathers
     speed   in  the  NHS,  individual  hospitals  are  using
     technology  to radically improve planning and  efficient
     use  of  resources. B-Plan's insight system  will  allow
     them  to  go further and test their level of achievement
     against  comparable  hospitals  elsewhere,  and  against
     national   averages.  This  investment  allows   us   to
     transform   B-Plan's  strategy  towards   provision   of
     financial   and  activity  benchmarking   software   and
     services over the net'.

Commenting on the investment Mike Whitaker, CEO of SPARK said
today:

     'Our  investment in B-Plan reflects our  belief  in  the
     strength of the management team and also in the product.
     We  feel  that  there is a great need  for  the  inSIGHT
     technology that is being developed, and that it will  be
     the  benchmark software of choice for leading healthcare
     and other public sector institutions.'



NOTES FOR EDITORS:

Background Since 1948 the NHS has struggled to find a  simple
method  of  costing its treatments and procedures and  ensure
efficient use of taxpayers' resources allocated to each  part
of  the  service. Wide variations exist in hospitals' costing
for  apparently  identical items. There is  now  a  mandatory
requirement on each hospital Trust for annual Reference  Cost
Submissions showing a breakdown of expenditure in  a  defined
format.  This  aims  to identify unacceptable  variations  in
clinical  activity  and resultant costs (e.g.  theatre  time,
length  of stay, proportion of procedures carried out as  day
cases), and compare overall performance.

Present information systems currently suffer from a number of
shortcomings. Hospital managers lack the capability to access
data at short notice. Producing the Reference Cost Submission
to  the  DoH  requires considerable extra expense and  effort
with little useful feedback. The detail it requires is at HRG
(Healthcare   Resource  Group - a   group   of   comparable
treatments)  rather than specific treatment  level:  managers
are  unable to identify and analyse the make up of HRG's  and
find  the real reasons for cost variations. Previous software
packages  available on the market which could assist  in  the
task  are operating in isolated environments and are creating
scattered islands of non-comparable data.

B-Plan  already  provides treatment-specific costing  systems
for  200  hospitals.  It can therefore  access,  process  and
compare  like-for-like data for  more than half  of  all  NHS
hospitals,  and provide live data of real use to  management.
B-Plan's  inSIGHT  system allows managers to  submit  current
costing  data in digital form via the internet,  and  receive
benchmarking  comparisons  in return,  with  minimal  further
intervention.  Those  hospitals  not  already  using   B-Plan
systems  can  achieve connectivity by creating  generic  .dbf
files that mimic B-Plan's costing environment.

B-Plan  Information Systems was founded in 1993  by  brothers
Shirko  and Farhad Abid following their return to the  UK  as
refugees  from Kurdistan in 1991. The company has become  the
leading  supplier of costing, budgeting and data  warehousing
systems to the NHS, with its software in use in over 200  NHS
hospitals.  B-Plan has recently supplied similar products  to
the  Prison  Service,  Police Forces  and  Universities.  For
further information please contact Phil Paterson on 0161  226
0000 or email [e-mail].

NewMedia  SPARK  plc, whose directors include Mike  Whitaker,
Luke  Johnson  and  internet investment banking  pioneer  Tom
Teichman, was the first London quoted internet start-up  fund
and raised £40 million in late 1999 through an AIM flotation.
20 investments have since been completed: B-Plan is the first
in  the  healthcare sector. Earlier this week SPARK announced
the  £85m  acquisition  of  Cell ICD,  Scandinavia's  leading
Internet incubator, coupled with a further £50m fund raising.
For  further information, contact Alastair King on  0171  851
7734 or [e-mail].


Michael Whitaker                               0468 555944
NewMedia SPARK plc                           [phone]

Lisa Baderoon / Tim Anderson
Buchanan Communications                      [phone]