IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

The Common Services Agency (more commonly known as National Services Scotland), a statutory body constituted pursuant to the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 (‘NSS’) intends to procure on behalf of NHS Scotland software and/or service solutions (‘Solutions’) designed to modernise the legacy mainframe applications which support a number of key systems used within NHS Scotland and which may extend for use in the wider public sector. The current set of mainframe software solutions have served NHS Scotland exceptionally well over the past (in some cases) 25-plus years, but are now expensive to maintain and are not effective in supporting a modern service that is dependent on fast electronic communications and paper-lite ways of working. NSS intends to procure Solutions in two separate lots: — Lot 1 Community Health Index — Lot 2 Scottish Child Public Health and Wellbeing System (‘the Lots’) Bidders may apply to be considered for 1 or more Lots. NSS requires reliable, secure, flexible Solutions that will support the NHS in Scotland in delivering the highest standards of healthcare to the people of Scotland in a cost effective and efficient manner. NSS is prepared to consider a range of Solutions that may be proposed by Bidders (defined below), including a service model. We are interested in exploring hosting options will ask bidders to provide a hosting proposal. Accordingly, NSS is conducting this procurement as a negotiated procedure under the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2012. NSS will separately procure an implementation partner to facilitate the implementation and integration of the Solutions with each other and with other NHS solutions and services. This procurement will be conducted once the Solutions are sufficiently established to enable the role of the implementation partner to be scoped. Awarded contracts will be conditional on the appointment of an implementation partner for the applicable Lot. Data security is crucial and Solutions must be compliant with NHS data security requirements and data protection legislation. The NHS in Scotland requires long term stability for these crucial applications. Accordingly, long term contracts of ten (10) years are being sought with a commitment to provide support during this period. Options to extend the contracts and/ or a right to continued use of the Solutions would be considered advantageous. Solutions should be agile and flexible to meet developments in healthcare provision. Some developments can be anticipated, for example, as a consequence of current progress in the integration of health and social care, the expansion of telehealth and affording patients direct access to records and services. Solutions must be capable of cost effective development and enhancement throughout the contract term to meet the challenges facing NHS Scotland. These Solutions will be crucial to the operation of the NHS in Scotland and must be fully supported with guaranteed availability round the clock, every day of the year. These Solutions will require integration with each other and many existing legacy systems and interfaces. The Solutions must adopt open standards, current and future. Coordination and co-operation with providers of other services and systems to NHS Scotland will be essential. A range of support and implementation services will be required dependent on the Solution proposed and the proposed integration model.