NHS England has awarded a contract valued up to £9 million to a delivery partner to support its Frontline Digitisation programme.

PwC LLP has been successful in the tender process, to provide a support offer to the NHS England Transformation Directorate programme, which includes providing advice, expertise and intervention (where required) to NHS provider trusts undertaking their electronic patient record transformation programmes.

The programme aims to provide national support for locally led digital transformation, including to support a national target for NHS trusts to reach core level digitisation and capability by March 2025, achieving 90 percent EPR coverage. The tender originally stated that currently 43 providers have an existing EPR that meets the required standard, and the majority of trusts have an existing EPR that needs optimisation, 11 are in procurement or implementation, with 19 developing business cases, data from NHS England states.

In addition, the tender stated the successful partner will “support the establishment and management of a ‘Centre of Expertise,’ available to frontline provider organisations to call upon throughout the programme lifecycle from conception to optimisation.”

This ‘Centre of Expertise’ will include services from the delivery partner to support and up-skill organisations, ranging from go-live readiness to benefits realisation.

Some of the requirements of the tender include for the delivery partner to support: masterclasses, drop-in sessions, coaching, training or train the trainer, consultancy advice, document reviews, programme reviews and health-checks, audits, test assurance, data migration, interoperability, training development and deployment, and other areas to support the programme.

The tender received eight applications, with the total anticipated spend for the contract up to £9 million.

To view the award contract, please click here.