IP telephone services

Tender description

This Prior Information Notice (PIN) solely relates to early market engagement. The purpose of this market engagement is to engage with providers to seek market feedback in relation to a potential forthcoming procurement. Suppliers are invited to respond to a Request for Information (RFI) questionnaire v2. Please note if you have already responded to RFI questionnaire v1, there is no need to complete the full questionnaire again. However, we would like to draw your attention to newly added question 17 and invite an addendum to your initial response containing the response to this question 17. NHS 111 was introduced to make it easier for the public to access urgent healthcare services. The free to call 111 number is available 24 hours a day 365 days a year to respond to people’s healthcare needs when: — you need medical help fast, but it’s not a 999 emergency, — you don’t know who to contact for medical help, — you think you need to go to A&E or another NHS urgent care service, — you require health information or reassurance about what to do next. In 2017 NHS England published the Integrated Urgent Care (IUC) Service specification. The core vision for an IUC service builds upon the success of NHS 111 in simplifying access for patients and increasing the confidence that they, local commissioners, health professionals and most importantly the public have in services. The offer is easy access to urgent health care services that is fully integrated with all aspects of the system — through NHS 111. This integration sees urgent care services collaborating to deliver high quality, clinical assessment, advice and treatment, with shared standards and processes and clear accountability and leadership. The 111 number must become the single telephony access point. The IUC service is underpinned by the 111 telephone number and the technical infrastructure on which it resides. This infrastructure allows calls to be routed to the IUC Provider covering the location from which the call originated and effectively reverses the cost of the call by levying an inbound call charge on NHS England (so as to make the call free to the caller). In February 2020 the current “inbound services” contract for 111 expires. NHS England is therefore seeking to engage with the market in relation to the potential re-procurement of the aforementioned managed service. We would also like to explore expanding the scope to include automation through Natural Language Processing and multimedia contact centre technology. NHS England is therefore looking for one or more Suppliers to deliver the following aims: Procurement Lot A 1) To provide a Managed Service for telephony infrastructure and associated services to support IUC (NHS 111) and NPFS requirements through to 2025; 2) This service is for (but not limited to) the hosting of the 111 number ensuring that it is carried by all UK carriers, making the 111 number free to call, providing country and service selection (for when the NPFS is mobilised) and automatic caller location identification (landline, mobile, Wi-Fi and Internet telephone calls), for the purposes of call routing to correct provider. The high level core draft requirements are included in Appendix 1 of the RFI; these are covered in depth within Appendix 3 of the RFI; 3) In addition to the core requirements, there are a number of enhanced requirements which we may wish to implement. These high level draft enhanced requirements are included in Appendix 2 of the RFI. Procurement Lot B 1) To provide a cloud based call-centre telephony solution (see Appendix 4 of the RFI), to be available on a call-off basis by current or future IUC service providers. Please note: the above lots (A&B) may be treated as individual lots or as a single aggregated lot.