Digital Maternity Programme

Tender description

In support of the NHS England and Improvement Maternity Transformation Programme and the Children and Young People Programme, NHSX are initiating a Digital Child Health and Maternity Programme. This is to support the attainment of optimal outcomes for women, children and families, described in the NHS Long Term Plan and a number of reports including, Better Births, Ockenden review of maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust and The best start for life: a vision for the 1,001 critical days. NHSX now wish to commence a baseline understanding of the market place and in advance of bringing together a coherent means for NHS providers to procure Digital Maternity Services to support NHS England and Improvement ambitions.The forthcoming RFI exercise in conjunction with an internal maturity assessment will help to shape the value of a future Digital Maternity Services Framework or similar. Lot 1: As part of the Maternity Transformation Programme overseen by NHS England / Improvement, the Digital Child Health and Maternity Programme, led by NHSX, aims to meet the following outcomes:● Citizen Empowerment - empowering women and their families to access and interact with curated healthcare information and their data in order to make informed decisions;● Improved Patient Safety - providing clinicians and other practitioners with access to relevant and timely information at any point of care to ensure the best health and care outcomes for pregnant women; and● Digital Maturity - improving the user experience for women and professionals, including reducing the burden of data entry and driving towards a paperless environment.To support this ambition, NHS England / Improvement and NHSX are committed to working with the marketplace. As an early step, we are seeking to better understand what suppliers of digital technology-based solutions can offer to support, throughout pregnancy, any or all of women, their families and partners, and the health and social care professionals supporting them, and to hear about the supplier experience or perceptions of NHS procurement processes. This will inform the development of new commercial mechanisms and/or the evolution of existing mechanisms, to be utilised in the investment of the solution.To gather this information, a request for information (RFI) will be issued by close of play 11 June 2021, with responses requested by 9 July 2021.For the RFI, our interest is in the full pathway from pre-conception, through pregnancy to post-natal care. Solutions may support a specific part of this pathway or the full end-to-end journey.Our interest is in both solutions to be used by women, their families and by health and social care system professionals (including clinicians / administrators / commissioners). The former may encompass women with co-morbidities, such as gestational diabetes. We also have an interest in how technology can help address health inequalities. The latter includes fertility, midwifery and obstetrics services (in the community and acute services), and also primary care services (GPs) and other community based health and social care services when they are focused on the maternity pathway.We welcome RFI responses from suppliers with solutions that are already deployed in the UK or overseas, either in support of people and professionals engaged with the pregnancy pathway or a similar healthcare pathway that is transferable.Suppliers with early stage innovative solutions can instead approach innovation.offers@nhsx.nhs.uk as an initial step in accessing a support offer.Suppliers with ‘commodity’ or ‘general’ products and services do not need to engage in the RFI - examples include suppliers of laptops, mobile connectivity services, user experience specialists, evaluation services. Mature commercial mechanisms to support the procurement of such solutions already exist. [Link to comment, believe this is now resolved - suggest resolving the comment before resharing the next version]Participation in the RFI exercise is not a prerequisite for any future procurement activities, and will not impact on the outcomes of any such activities. Similarly, any information provided or views expressed in an RFI will not impact on the outcomes of any future procurement activities a supplier may engage in. Additional information: The RFI will be published on our eSourcing Portal, Atamis. To ensure you are able to access and respond to the RFI, please register as a supplier here; health.atamis.co.uk . Once registered on the portal please email nicholas.knight@nhs.net to request to be given access to the RFI once it has been published.