A ten-year EPR contract has been awarded to The Access Group by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
The contract, worth an estimated £11.9 million, will run from November 2026 to November 2036. It was reportedly awarded via the NHS LPP clinical digital health solutions framework agreement.
The trust shared plans to procure an EPR system for implementation in 2027 as part of its digital and data strategy late last year. At that time, it spoke of hopes that the system would enable the delivery of additional systems such as ambient voice technology. “A clear priortisation will be required to prevent double running – AI will be part of the EPR,” it noted.
Core focuses of the new strategy also include developing a digitally literate and skilled workforce to help maximise adoption of digital technologies, ensuring available data is leveraged for population health management and predictive analytics, and establish a digitally integrated care model facilitating seamless coordination across services within and beyond the trust borders.
Improving foundations, enhancing existing systems and simplifying processes is another focus of the strategy, with SLaM planning to review current uses of tools and processes to identify duplication and opportunities for improved efficiencies. Structured “role appropriate” training will be offered to staff to support them in using available technology more effectively, clinical systems will be aligned to clinical workflows, and systems will be integrated within the trust and with partners.
The board further outlines a series of key targets to determine the success of the strategy, looking to achieve a 25 percent increase in the utilisation of tools and systems, a reduction in technical debt, the deployment of ambient voice technology across all clinical services, and 40 percent of back-office functionality supported by AI.
Wider trend: Health tech procurement
Digital Health and Care Wales has chosen to abandon its £10m ambient voice technology procurement, citing a “limited number of suppliers successfully meeting the Conditions of Participation requirements”. The organisation launched the open framework agreement in August, aiming to support the adoption of the technology to improve clinical documentation processes. It shared its intent to use the exercise to maintain a “pre-qualified list” of AVT suppliers, with conditions enabling participation and the need to achieve a minimum evaluation threshold. The decision to abandon the process has been made following the completion of the Conditions of Participation assessment stage, DHCW notes, which reviewed the procurement outcome.
NHS England has opened a secondary care medicines data pre-market engagement, with high level objectives around achieving a reporting function on stock and daily issuance of medicines in secondary care, and a price comparison tool. With a total value of £6.75 million, the preliminary market engagement notice shares details of plans to secure capability and related tooling for the processing of data from hospital pharmacy systems, along with associated licensing and implementation support.
NHS England has awarded a contract with a total value of £9.9 million to Kainos Software Limited for support with a range of services in preparation for the new NHS Online Trust. The contract covers data management services, digital definition, DevOps, and end-to-end development, as part of the virtual hospital programme Alpha Development Phase 2. NHSE lists key deliverables for clinical workflow tooling including standard operating procedures to enable standardisation and scalability of processes central to trust operations and care delivery; integration with national NHSE systems to support national reporting; and integration with the NHS App.
