Bidding opens on £800m NHS Digital framework

Bids are open for an £800m framework which is designed to allow NHS Digital to “develop strategic relationships” with a small selection of suppliers of software-development services.

The health-service technology unit wants to identify about 12 firms willing to commit to “invest in understanding [its] specific organisational needs and to bespoke delivery of… services to meet requirements” across the NHS.

Suppliers may be asked, via individual call-off contracts, to provide comprehensive service development, or support with progressing a service through an individual phase.

The goal of the procurement vehicle, the tender process for which is being run by the Crown Commercial Service, is to support NHS Digital – and other health and social care organisations around the country – in delivering “digital outcomes and supporting services”.

NHS Digital has defined four categories of services that will be covered by the contract, the first of which is “DevOps services”, which will address the need for support for digital services that are already live and operational.The second category is “build and transition services”. Suppliers in this area will be tasked with “either separately combining beta phase and/or retirement phases – including transition to live”.

The penultimate service area is “end-to-end development”, where NHS Digital wishes to work with providers “with the ability to combine the full set of agile phases of discovery through to live”.

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Source: Public Technology
Author: Sam Trendall
Date: 28 August 2020