NHS England seeks to procure up to ten community pharmacy IT suppliers to support the integration of the Record A Vaccination System (RAVS) across primary care and community pharmacy settings.
The upcoming procurement follows the decision to develop an in-house system for the capture and flow of vaccination data to prevent reliance on third party suppliers, said to save around £6 million annually.
RAVS was rolled out in 2024/25, largely across secondary care. NHSE is now looking to achieve further rollout across the primary care sector, and specifically in community pharmacy settings, where it is hoped to support greater engagement with NHS vaccination campaigns via single sign-on.
The selected suppliers will be required to integrate RAVS as the “sole and standardised digital vaccination data capture system” for community pharmacy providers, into existing IT systems.
The total value of the contract is set to be £500,000, running from 1 June 2026 to 31 December 2026, with the potential to extend to 1 June 2027. Suppliers should hold an NHS Connection Agreement, and be able to demonstrate a digital data recording system currently in use in the community pharmacy market. They should also be capable of meeting required deadlines.
A webinar is to be held in March to offer further information on the procurement process, and invitation to tender documentation is expected in early April, depending on market response.
Wider trend: NHSE digital transformation
NHS England has published a preliminary market engagement notice expressing its intent to procure digital therapeutics solutions for menopause. At this stage, the financial aspects of the procurement remain undefined, according to NHS England. Contract dates are also yet to be agreed, with an estimated date for publication of the tender notice given as 1 December 2026. As part of the engagement, suppliers are asked for details of their organisation and product offerings, before being asked questions about barriers to the scaled adoption of digital CBT technologies within the menopause pathway, and the commercial models and approaches most suited to facilitating this scaled adoption.
NHS England has shared an open letter to current suppliers across the health and care system, outlining the shared responsibility to strengthen cyber security, and plans for direct supplier engagement. From January 2026, NHS England will be looking to contact suppliers directly to discuss current cyber security controls, requesting supporting information or evidence “where appropriate”, such as in instances where suppliers deliver services deemed to be critical to patient care or operational continuity. All suppliers are encouraged to review the Cyber Security Supply Chain Charter and the expectations it sets out around maintaining system support, vulnerability patching, using multi-factor authentication, maintaining “standards met” in the Data Security and Protection Toolkit, testing recovery plans, and ensuring effective monitoring of critical IT infrastructure.
NHS England has launched its Solution Exchange, a catalogue of digital tools, solutions, and resources, designed to help NHS organisations discover and adopt new technologies. Based in the Federated Data Platform (FDP), the catalogue is said to bring together proven tools and innovations with the aim of reducing duplication and accelerating the use of data-driven solutions. “NHS trusts and integrated care systems can browse the catalogue, deploy solutions directly into their local platform, or use the secure developer workspace to build and test new tools with sample data,” NHSE explains.
