CCS goes live with £800m NHS IT framework

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has gone live with a four-year, £800m framework providing IT management services for NHS and social care.

The Digital Capability for Health framework, created in collaboration with NHS Digital, aims to help health and care organisations meet their needs in developing digital solutions.

This includes products such as electronic referral services and screening and care records, and the framework also covers services for DevOps, digital definition, build and transition, end-to-end development and management.

In August 2020, CCS issued a prior information notice for the framework, seeking suppliers that could deliver work using the Government Digital Service’s (GDS) agile methodologies and with which NHS Digital could “develop strategic relationships over a sufficient period of time, to warrant up-front investment in framework-level supplier-agnostic competition, while maintaining effective and efficient competition at call-off”.

CCS awarded 12 suppliers a place on the framework, including four small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which all have technical capabilities and experience in the health sector.

Several healthcare bodies, including NHSX, NHS Digital, NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) helped to evaluate and select the suppliers for the framework.

NHS Digital commercial director Robert McMillan said CCS and NHS Digital had “productively collaborated to deliver Digital Capability for Health, blending our organisations’ expertise of the digital market and specialisms in awarded large-scale framework agreements”.

He added: “We are thrilled with the result and pleased to welcome 12 strong suppliers with leading expertise across the digital lifecycle and look forward to developing relationships with these suppliers and their supply chains to further strengthen our delivery capabilities.”

CCS expects NHS organisations to use the framework to develop digital solutions to support the Covid-19 pandemic response and the Brexit transition, as well as to generally help people get easier access to public services.