ANS Beta

Description

Pre-market engagement N/A Work done so far In 2022, ANS failed its service assessment by not being user-centred, lacking performance measurement, and not meeting government security and accessibility requirements. In October 2024, in line with the recommendations made in the service assessment report, the Digital Transformation team worked with the ANS Team and a third party to deliver a Discovery. The recommendation from Discovery was to explore implementing a new digital service and supporting processes that effectively captures data, meets user needs and is compliant with government standards. The Alpha phase tested different solutions to identify the best approach for improving the notification process. The objective was to to develop a user-centred service that enhances digital adoption, improves operational efficiency and ensures compliance with statutory requirements.The works included: • User research with clinics, DHSC staff, and stakeholders • Mapping current workflows and system constraints • Prototyping and usability testing of new service components • Technical investigations into OCR integration, secure API design, and digital workflows • Development of an outcome-focused specification for Beta At the end of Alpha, we have documented proposal for a 'to-be' end to end service. This proposal has been validated against user needs and refined based on risky assumption testing completed as part of Alpha. Which phase the project is in Beta Existing team The supplier will work regularly with the following team at DHSC: • Grade 6 - Public Health Doctor • Grade 7 Product Owner – Accountable for delivery of ANS Beta phase • Grade 7 Programme Manager • ANS Internal Delivery Teams The supplier may be asked to engage with the following individuals/teams during delivery: • Policy and Legal Advisors: ensure compliance with abortion policy, legal, and regulatory frameworks. • NHS Transformation Directorate: responsible for ensuring all services at DHSC are compliant with the service standards. • Security & Cyber Lead: ensures infrastructure meets NCSC standards • Data Protection Office: ensures the department is compliant with it's data protection responsiblities. • IT Function: to deliver integration with DHSC monitoring and alerting services and to ensure live service support is compliant with departmental expectations. Collaboration and Ways of Working Internal Product Lead Partnership: During the beta phase, the supplier's team will be expected to work in close collaboration with an internal Product Lead, who will: • Define objectives and scope of the Beta. • Own and define product requirements. • Make final decision regarding feature prioritisation and scope. • Act as a primary point of contact for day to day questions and feedback. The supplier team must demonstrate flexibiltiy and responsiveness to evolving requirements and priorities as directed by the Product Lead. Team Shape The supplier must provide a multidisciplinary team with skills and experience relevant to the project scope, including but not limited to: • Delivery Manager • Service Designer • UX Designer • Content Designer • User Researchers • Business Analyst • Developers • DevOps/Platform Engineer • Testers In addition, access to but not required full time: • Performance Analyst • Technical Architecture Address where the work will be done Work can be undertaken remotely. The DHSC team have two offices in London (39 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, SW1H 0EU) and (10 South Colonnade, London E14 4PA), should in person working arrangements take place. There is a preference for select in-person meetings/workshops when possible and appropriate. Working arrangements The supplier’s staff will be expected to work collaboratively with the DHSC team to deliver the Beta phase of a digital solution. To ensure effective collaboration and knowledge sharing, the supplier’s team should be available during typical working hours (Monday to Friday, 9.00am to 5.00pm). We expect the supplier to take a lead in organising and facilitating agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives, weekly updates, and show-and-tell sessions. These ceremonies will help ensure that all work is transparent, iterative, and driven by validated user needs. All meetings and ceremonies will take place remotely unless otherwise agreed. If the supplier would like to meet in person, this can be arranged with DHSC in advance, but any associated travel or accommodation will be at the supplier’s own expense. Documentation: 1. A shared log will be maintained throughout the project to track risks, issues, and lessons learned. This will include a clear route for escalation agreed at the outset. 2. The supplier will be expected to maintain delivery documentation to enable easy onboarding of internal owner. Reporting and Engagement: 1. Weekly check-ins will be held with a nominated DHSC product owner to align on progress, discuss blockers, and support decision-making. 2. Regular show-and-tell sessions will be used to engage a wider stakeholder group, including policy, technical, and clinical leads. These will be used to share insights, demonstrate progress, and gather feedback. There will be NO separate budget for travel or subsistence. Any in-person engagement requested by the supplier will be self-funded. Provide more information about your security requirements: Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Latest start date 2026-02-28 Enter the expected contract length: 1 year Extension period: 1 year Special terms and conditions 1. The supplier must comply with all legal and regulatory requirements related to the handling of personal and health data under GDPR and the Abortion Regulations 1991. 2. The service must be delivered in line with GDS Service Standards and pass GDS assessment at the Beta stage. 3. Supplier must support any required migration activities from the existing service to any future solution by May 2027. 4. The solution must meet GDPR requirements. 5. Supplier must provide knowledge transfer to internal teams to ensure sustainability and support. 6. Supplier must provide proactive security monitoring and incident response capability. 7. All expenses must be pre-agreed between the parties and must comply with the Cabinet Office (CO) Travel and Subsistence (T&S) Policy. DHSC reserves the right to terminate the agreement where the supplier has not met the deliverables set out in the agreed statement of works. DHSC will retain ownership of the intellectual property rights created during the contract. Write the term or acronym: • ANS – Abortion Notification Service: The Abortion Act 1967 outlines a legal obligation that the Chief Medical Officer is notified of every abortion within England and Wales (within 14 days of the termination) using a HSA4 notification. The Abortion Notification Service (ANS) supports the submission and processing of HSA4s and makes the data available to the Abortion Statistics Team. • DHSC – Department of Health & Social Care: The UK government department responsible for public health, adult social care, and the NHS. • CMO – Chief Medical Office: The UK government’s lead medical advisor responsible for public health and clinical oversight, including abortion notifications. • HSA4 – Paper Abortion Notification Forms Submitted to CMO: The forms (paper and electronic) used by clinicians to report abortions to the CMO, as required by law. • DPU – Digital Policy Unit: A team within the NHS Transformation Directorate responsible for shaping digital strategy and policy across departments. • GDS – Government Digital Service: A government team that supports digital transformation and ensures public services meet the GOV.UK service standard. • BPSS - Baseline Personnel Security Standard • CO - Cabinet Office • Discovery: As outlined in the GDS Service Standard, the Discovery phase is about understanding user needs, defining the problem, and exploring the context to ensure you're addressing the right challenges. • Alpha: As outlined in the GDS Service Standard, the Alpha phase involves prototyping and testing multiple solutions with users to identify the most effective approach before full-scale development. • Beta: As outlined in the GDS Service Standard, the Beta phase focuses on building a functional version of the service, releasing it to real users, and iteratively improving it based on feedback to ensure it meets user needs and service requirements. Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: 2000000 Provide further information: £2,000,000 excluding VAT Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply Summary of work DHSC is looking for a delivery partner for a Beta phase of a new Abortion Notification Service (ANS). The core aim is to build, test, and refine a new ANS service that will: (1) Enable registered medical practitioners to securely and efficiently submit HSA4s to DHSC. (2) Enable DHSC to monitor compliance of the Abortion Act 1967. (3) Support robust monitoring and continual improvement of abortion care services. (4) Enable the publication of anonymised data to inform public health policy and support research. The Beta phase will involve build, test, and improvement to a new service through private and public beta. The service must support submissions via 3 channels (webform, API, and paper), ensure secure data handling, and meet GDS standards. The service currently has around 1500 total users (externalinternal) and processes around 250,000 notifications per year. The proposed solution includes the following service components: (1) Web Front-end: used by abortion care providers to create, view, authorise, and submit HSA4s. (2) A SOAP API Service (already in use): used to integrate with the clinics back-office ERP systems using a dll to support the create API submissions. (3) Back Office System: used by ANS team to validate, approve and return HSA4 forms (4) User Administration Tools: used to manage who can access the service and perform identity-proofing for external users. Additionally, the following functionality needs to be scoped further : (1) Digitising Paper HSA4 Forms: we have an enduring statutory requirement to collect and process paper HSA4s. This is currently done using specialist scanning and OCR technology (2) Secure Environment and Data Visualisation Tools for Data Analysis - provide a secure environment to store frozen datasets. Must be able to allow data analysts to transform complex datasets into actionable insights for publication. This is a gap in the existing service. Anticipated date for Public Beta: November 2026 subject to Beta assessment. Where the supplied staff will work London Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Who is the organisation using the products or services DHSC is the commissioning organisation. The service is managed by DHSC’s ANS team on behalf of the CMO who is the statutory recipient of HSA4 forms. Why the work is being done ANS supports the timely submission and processing of HSA4 notifications, ensuring compliance with the Abortion Act 1967 and Abortion Regulations 1991. The contract with the current supplier will expire in May 2027. This is a statutory service so failure to procure and invest in a new service would result in serious legal, reputational, operational, and public health risks. ANS is currently a live service used by all abortion care providers to meet their legal obligation to notify CMO of an abortion. It does not meet government digital,security, or accessibility standards. DHSC are taking this opportunity to design and build a service that meets government standards, user needs, and its intended objectives (monitoring legal compliance and the production of timely abortions statistics) through a GDS Beta phase. The following functionality must be delivered by April 2027 to ensure DHSC is able to meet it's legal responsibilities: • capability for abortion care providers to create, populate, and submit HSA4s. • capability to receive webform, API, and paper HSA4 submissions. • capability that supports new user registration, including provision for the internal team to manage user accounts and perform identify verification for new users. • perform data validation checks that support legal compliance monitoring. • extract frozen datasets for analysis • collect key performance metrics. Our current Beta roadmap proposes a 6 month Private Beta and with an aim to begin Public Beta in or before November 2026. All data migration activities need to be completed by the end of April 2027. The business problem you need to solve Problem Statement: Users find the current processes for submitting and processing abortion data time-consuming and unreliable, making the experience frustrating and prone to errors. This weakens DHSC’s ability to monitor compliance effectively and significantly delays important reporting of abortion data. Service Vision: Our vision is to deliver a secure, accessible, and reliable service that collects and processes abortion data in a timely and accurate way, so DHSC can monitor legal compliance and publish statistics for key stakeholders across healthcare and policy. Key Deliverables: • a secure cloud infrastructure to host the service. • a web front end that supports the creation of webforms and the authorisation and submission of all digital forms (API and webform). • a back office system that supports internal teams to view all HSA4s, perform data validation checks, return forms, and manage user accounts • explore options, test potential solutions, provide recommendations on future processes and implement agreed technology and supporting processes for digitising paper forms • the ability for internal teams to conduct identity verification checks on new user registrations. • the ability to collect and monitor key performance metrics. • capability that supports new user registration and secure sign-in, including provision for the internal team to manage user accounts and verify user identity • integration with DHSC managed monitoring and alerting systems. • the ability to extract frozen datasets and audit events into a secure data-lake (awaiting decision if DHSC managed or infrastructure local) environment for data analysis. • Integration and continued service support of the existing SOAP API. First user type: External Users - Providers of Abortion Care: those that submit the data, includes registered doctors, nurses, midwives, clinic adminstrators, and IT system administrators. First user type: External Users: Data Consumers: those that use the data, includes healthcare and research professionals, policy, academics, and the media. First user type: Internal Users: DHSC Data Team: those that process and analyse the data, includes data entry team, statistics team, and a medical consultant.