£360m NHS federated data platform up for tender

£360m NHS federated data platform up for tender

Contract could have a total estimated value of up to £480 million over a five-year period

The UK government has advertised an official contract for a federated data platform (FDP) for NHS England. The contract is valued at £360 million with an option to extend by 12 months, and with a total estimated value of up to £480 million over the five-year contract period. Tenders are invited from pre-qualified suppliers after discussion of requirements and potential solutions.

"The data platform will be owned and controlled by the NHS to unlock the power of NHS data to understand patterns, solve problems, plan services for local populations and ultimately transform the health and care of the people they serve," according to a post on the government's Contract Finder website.

The government first announced concrete plans to develop a FDP for NHS England in April 2022, when the probable cost was estimated at £220 million.

At that time, the FDP was described as "an ecosystem of technologies and services implemented across the NHS in England" with the goal of being "an essential enabler to transformational improvements across the NHS," based on five use cases:

  1. Population health and person insight
  2. Care coordination (ICS)
  3. Elective recovery (Trust)
  4. Vaccines and immunisation
  5. Supply chain

It was also suggested the procurement would consist of two lots - the platform itself plus integration services, and privacy-enhancing technology; the latter is not mentioned in the latest post.

Tola Sargeant, Director at analyst TechMarketView and healthcare tech specialist, commented:

"The hope is that this will give the NHS a lot more visibility, about what's happening, where the pressures are, where the demand is and help with planning in particular.

"It's easy to see how having all this data available on a national level would be hugely beneficial due to the NHS. However, it is a big contract and I can see why there will be people who feel it's a lot of money to be spending on something like that at a time when some areas of the NHS don't have basic electronic patient record capability.

"The NHS is keen to really be at the forefront internationally as well as nationally in terms of how they use data and get as much insight as possible from this data, which will be anonymised."

Controversial US data mining company Palantir is likely to be a player. The company was originally handed a £1 contract during the Covid pandemic to assist with vaccination and ventilator distribution, but its Foundry analytics platform has since found its way into multiple other parts of NHS England's operations.

The FT recently reported that Palantir would be in a strong position in a bid for the FDP contract, despite privacy concerns over patient data confidentiality, given the CIA-funded company's background in government and corporate surveillance.

In October, a leaked paper revealed Palantir has a strategy of working its way into the NHS via acquisitions if its contract bids are blocked.

This article was edited to add the comment from Tola Sargeant.