NHS England and Improvement have launched a new £1.25 million tender to develop ‘Digital Staff Passports’ for permanent use, building on from the interim COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport.
The invitation to tender for the service focuses on designing and developing an alpha version of the digital staff passport for permanent staff movements, starting with doctors in training.
In response to the pandemic, the COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport was developed as an interim solution, and now NHS England and NHS Improvement aim to commence further work and introduce a longer term solution.
Outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS People Plan and ‘Busting Bureaucracy’ document, the new service hopes to make digital staff passports available to substantially more staff to service different types of staff movements.
NHS staff undergo rigorous pre-employment vetting before they begin work, including checks on professional registration, qualifications and criminal records.
The current COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport enables information about these checks to be shared quickly between NHS organisations, allowing staff to move safely and swiftly around sites, particularly in urgent care situations, and also ensures that HR departments know staff are cleared to work.
Through the tender process, NHS E/I and NHSX plan to better understand what providers of digital passport technologies are in the market and they aim to establish a new service line for digital staff passport providers under the Health System Support Framework, to ensure a broad and open market is created.
An early market engagement webinar is taking place on Wednesday 12 May, from 11am – 12noon, for suppliers to find out more. To register your attendance, email to Julian.Farley@nhs.net, with an email titled ‘Digital Staff Passports Webinar’ and confirm your company name, attendee name, and job title.
To find out more information on the tender please click here.
