Credit: Mohamed Hassan/Pixabay

NHS England has unveiled plans to create a “suite of frameworks” worth more than £1bn to provide general practice and the wider primary-care sector with a range of digital services.

The commercial agreements will cover core electronic patient record (EPR) systems, as well as various services to support digital care services – including booking and management of appointments, and audiovisual tools for remote consultations.  The health service is also seeking to enable the provision of platforms to support community pharmacies, as well as “digital vaccination services”.

Included across the frameworks will be technologies such as “document management, clinical decision support… voice recognition, [and] mobile solutions”, according to a newly published early-engagement notice.

The procurement arrangements will allow individual GPs and networks of surgeries, other community primary-care providers, and integrated care systems to award call-off contracts to support their technological requirements.

Related content

• NHS urges practices to adopt online GP registration
• NHS Digital boss hails ‘opportunity to put digital at the heart of the NHS’ as merger concludes
• Government offers £100k for NHS digital policy chief

The frameworks – under the banner of Digital Services for Integrated Care – are intended to work alongside existing contracts, according to the engagement notice. In total, the frameworks are expected to be worth an estimated £975.8m to the featured suppliers.

“This prior information notice is to advise the market of forthcoming opportunities from NHS England's Digital Services for Integrated Care Programme… for the provision of foundation EPR solutions and associated capabilities for primary care IT,” it added. “These solutions will be reflective of healthcare professionals' needs, as shared with NHS England through detailed research and user engagement. They will augment those solutions in development or already assured for marketing on the Digital Care Services Catalogue via two other active frameworks: the Tech Innovation framework and the Digital First Online Consultation and Video Consultation framework and the former GP IT Futures framework.”

The engagement notice indicates that, until 16 June, interested providers are invited to take part in “an information-gathering exercise” which could help to shape any future formal procurement process.