NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) has launched a market research exercise into a new national sexual health system to potentially replace their existing solution.
Scotland’s current national sexual health system has been in use since 2008, with NSS now looking to explore the market to understand solutions that can provide clinicians with digital patient management services. According to NSS, they’re at the market research stage at the moment and are planning to look at “if new options are available and where their current system sits in the market”, with the ultimate end goal to replace their current contract.
Specified requirements made by NSS state that the system must be “responsive to the needs of the population” in order to match what their existing system has to offer. They’re also looking for a solution that provides full EPR functionality and supports a range of integrated sexual health services, such as genitourinary medicine, sexual and reproductive health, abortion services, counselling, psychosexual medicine, HIV care and registries for hepatitis B & C and gender.
As part of the market research, NHS National Services Scotland has released a market research questionnaire, encouraging interested suppliers to submit responses that describe their solutions and what makes them a suitable fit, with a submission deadline set for 8 September 2025.
With a focus on reforming Scotland’s healthcare services, the Scottish government recently announced that NSS will be merging with NHS Education for Scotland as part of the Health and Social Care Service Renewal Framework, where the two organisations will create a new “cross-cutting delivery function for NHSScotland and related services” known as NHS Delivery. This will reportedly “help NHSScotland in its mission to strengthen national delivery, drive innovation, and improve outcomes across health and care services”.
Improving health and social care across Scotland
Last month, an update on Scotland’s data strategy for health and social care shared key achievements from 2024/25 and priorities for 2025/26. The update highlighted the launch of the first iteration of the digital front door in NHS Lanarkshire in December 2025, plans to develop an interactive map for data ethics, a pause in GP IT system transition, work on the primary care data and intelligence platform, and an upcoming policy framework for the use of AI in health and social care.
The Scottish Government announced plans to make an £85 million investment into frontline frailty services, aiming to expand their Hospital at Home service to 2,000 beds by December 2026 and introduce frailty services in every A&E department by the end of summer 2025. This will reportedly see the programme meet 20 percent of Scotland’s NHS bed base.
Scotland’s Public Service Reform Strategy was published in June, setting out three commitments for Scottish public services: to be preventative, to better join up, and to be efficient. It also outlines 18 workstreams covering areas such as leadership, cultural change, and understanding demand drivers; as well as data sharing, digital public services, digital skills, and intelligent automation.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Lothian and AI evaluation company Aival recently began testing the technical performance of AI tools as part of a £1 million project looking at how well AI integrates with existing clinical systems and workflows. Funded by Innovate UK, the project aims to assess the safety and effectiveness of AI technology, creating a validation framework that will support assessments of these tools prior to procurement and help develop “less invasive and more cost-effective options”.
