Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BHFT) is seeking to engage with the market on the potential for a digital clinical triage service capable of assessing MSK conditions and navigating patients to relevant services “without human intervention”.
The trust states that it will use the outcomes from the soft market engagement exercise to improve its understanding of the provider landscape, to refine its requirements, and to inform its views of how to structure a “potential downstream procurement project”.
According to the notice, the tool will serve BHFT services covering community physiotherapy, specialist physiotherapy, the integrated pain and spinal service, and MSK podiatry.
Berkshire Healthcare moves on to set out requirements for the solution, including that it should be able to receive referrals from primary care, community services, and secondary care via the electronic referral service, as well as from patients as self-referrals through an online portal that BHFT is developing.
Assumptions are that the solution will likely need to be registered as a medical device, the trust highlights, adding later: “The level of automated clinical expertise to differentiate between general MSK physiotherapy, specialist MSK services, chronic pain and spinal services during assessment will be significant.”
BHFT also requests that, if possible, the solution should have the capabilities to be made available in languages including English, Polish, Punjabi, Nepalese, and Urdu.
“Any downstream procurement project will involve multiple award criteria across technical, quality, social value and price criteria,” the trust outlines. “Participation or non-participation in this soft market engagement shall not prevent any supplier participating in any potential future procurement, nor is it intended that any information supplied as part of this process shall place any supplier at an advantage in any potential procurement.”
The deadline given for expressions of interest is 2 November 2026 at 12:00pm.
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