NHS London Procurement Partnership has launched a pre-market engagement, ahead of a new framework for the provision of Digital Office and Transformation Solutions (DOTS), valued at £735 million.
The intention, the organisation states, is to simplify procurement processes and widen the focus from document solutions to cover digital, operational, and transformational technologies and services.
This second round of engagement follows its first round of pre-market engagement conducted in October 2025, noting plans to cover services and solutions including document management software, data storage services, business intelligence software, video conferencing software, through to consulting, software development, internet and support services.
NHS LPP added: “The framework will support NHS and wider public sector organisations in adopting technologies and services that enable operational transformation, workflow optimisation, automation, AI-enabled solutions, digital document management, analytics, infrastructure modernisation, and enterprise-wide digital strategies.”
An engagement deadline is given as 3 July 2026, with estimated contract dates running from February 2027 to September 2034, spanning over seven-and-a-half years. A tender notice is expected around the end of August 2026.
Wider trend: NHS innovation
For a recent session focusing on AI in healthcare, HTN was joined by an expert panel including Simon Brown, head of digital at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Wahida Jabarzai, clinical AI and automation delivery lead at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire and University Hospitals of Leicester; and Julian Wiggins, healthcare solution director at Rackspace Technology. Our panel considered the wider challenge of AI adoption, looking at what makes a successful deployment, introducing AI safely and sustainably at scale, and some of the use cases currently delivering value across their organisations.
The MHRA has published findings from the National Commission into the Regulation of AI in Healthcare research, pointing to the need to balance a desire to use AI in improving patient care and supporting healthcare professionals, with “safe, fast and trusted” regulation. Almost three-quarters of respondents (73 percent) disagreed or strongly disagreed that the current regulatory framework is sufficient to ensure safety and performance standards; with 61 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed with its effectiveness in tackling data governance and data privacy. 61 percent also thought current requirements for clinical evidence are insufficient, and 65 percent pointed to a need for more to be done on post-market surveillance.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has announced plans to launch a regulatory AI sandbox with the aim to explore how artificial intelligence can support medicines development and safety. The sandbox, funded by the Regulatory Innovation Office, will enable AI tools to be tested that have the potential to predict how medicines will be absorbed, processed, or whether they may cause harm. The sandbox will also be used to inform the MHRA about the reliability of whether AI tools can support in deciding the safety of new medicines.
