NHS Shared Business Services has published a prior information notice of a planned purchasing framework for artificial intelligence and extended reality technologies.
The indicative value of the framework is £150 million over four years from August 2023. NHS Shared Business Services intends to launch a tender process to put in place a HealthTech Innovation Gateway to provide a compliant route for the provision of solutions and services in AI and extended reality including augmented, virtual and mixed reality.
NHS Shared Business Services said: “The HealthTech Innovation Gateway is a commercial solution underpinned by a dynamic purchasing system and a procurement and commercial support ‘service wrap’ that aims to support suppliers (including innovators, start-ups and new entrants) navigate the NHS buying landscape and also streamline NHS buyers’ adoption of emerging digital and health technology.”
The framework requirements will align with the NICE Evidence Standards Framework for Digital Health Technologies (DHT), with the notice stating that technologies could range from treating and diagnosing medical conditions, guiding care choices, saving time and costs in services, or to help people and patients to manage their own health and wellness.
Further in the notice it states some of the broad range of technologies that could be included, such as technology to automate problem solving carried out by medical professionals, robotic process automation, natural language processing, computer vision, neural networks and distributed artificial intelligence.
View the prior information notice here.
