DHSC: Exploring Digital Opportunities to Improve Visibility and Coordination of Medicines Supply Issues – Discovery

Description

Terms and acronyms NHSBSA - NHS Business Services Authority DaSH – the DHSC Discontinuations and Shortages Portal SPS – Specialist Pharmacy Service PQP – The Price per Quality Point evaluation methodology Summary of the work: We are seeking to procure external expertise to deliver a Discovery phase to explore how we could improve the Departments ability to identify and ideally predict, medicine supply issues and strengthen our ability to respond to and mitigate them when they become material. Please see Attachment 5 for further detail Pricing model: Capped time and materials Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource: Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply Organisation the work is for: Department of Health and Social Care Where you want the supplier to work: No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Latest start date: 2026-12-01 Expected contract length: 0-03-00 Expected contract structure: 12 weeks term assumed for Discovery. There could be a limited and specific time extension to this if there are additional requirements identified Estimated contract value (excl VAT): 335000 Budget details: Cost for Discovery phase assumed to be max £335,000.00 excl. VAT. Any extension beyond 12 weeks would be for time only and would need to fit within this overall cost. Separate budget for Alpha and Beta phases will be sought upon completion of Discovery and based on recommendations and evidence developed in Discovery. Why the work is being done: Improve the Department's ability to predict, identify, assess and manage medicines supply risks through better visibility, stronger coordination, reduced manual processes and more robust evidence to support interventions. Discovery phase should apply a user-centred approach to real challenges to build the evidence base and test whether digital or data interventions are appropriate. Problem to be solved: Distinguishing genuine supply risks from background noise DHSC’s Medicines Supply Team needs to identify genuine emerging risks earlier. Signals from fragmented internal, stakeholder, regional and global sources create noise, and we are looking for ways of making it easier to distinguish local issues from risks that require national action. Fragmented and inconsistent supplier reporting Most shortages and discontinuations are reported through DaSH, with work underway on aligned secondary care reporting. Supplier notifications are often late or inconsistent. We are looking for something that is additional to current systems that will improve our ability to assess and mitigate earlier. Limited visibility of supply-side data DHSC’s Medicines Supply Team needs timely, accurate data on production, stock, supplier intent and deliveries. We want to have a fuller picture of available stock. Current systems provide only a partial view and do not show whether reported stock is available, committed to contracts or limited to forecast demand, hindering assessment of shortage scale and duration. Fragmented data and manual assessment processes Without unique product identifiers, DHSC’s Medicines Supply Team must combine differently recorded data from multiple systems and sectors, and we wish to move away from pharmacy professionals needing to spend significant time manually gathering and reconciling information before assessing a disruption’s impact. Limited visibility of market structure and supplier activity DHSC’s Medicines Supply Team needs a single, reliable view of active manufacturers and their market shares. This information is currently fragmented or supplier-reported and must often be estimated during triage, slowing risk assessment and mitigation. Further information in Attachment 5 Who the users are and what they need to do: As a Department of State, the Department of Health and Social Care has overall policy, strategic and operational responsibility for helping to ensure the continuity of the supply of medicines for NHS services in England. As such, we need to do everything we can to ensure that we have the tools to be able to predict and prevent shortages of medicines upon which millions of patients rely. This is currently more reactive than we would wish and we need to be able to see reliable stock, supply and market information across manufacturers, wholesalers and pre-wholesalers, so that we can identify, assess and mitigate emerging supply risks early. The Medicines Supply team are the main users. When a shortage does happen, they need to analyse information from a number of sources and then carry out manual risk assessments and contact suppliers by email. They need data from different systems to be linked and reconciled, so that they can assess the impact of a disruption without lengthy manual work There may also be opportunities to improve the user journeys of healthcare professionals, pharmacists and industry professionals, which should be taken into account during discovery, but the key ambition is to find a solution that improves the Departments ability to meet its obligations to citizens. Further information in Attachment 5 Current phase: Discovery Existing team: Policy leads, analysts, operational teams, NHSBSA leads, digital team Incumbent supplier: No Working arrangements: The Medicines Supply Strategy team will have oversight of the project. They will lead the onboarding of the supplier team and will provide subject matter expertise support through the duration of the project, In line with the Service Manual, we expect the team to take an agile approach to project management, using agile ceremonies such as daily stand ups, sprint planning and retrospectives, and for the team to work in the open providing progress to stakeholders through fortnightly ‘show and tell’ sessions. The delivery team will be empowered to work autonomously to plan and lead user research, map current user journeys and data flows, identify pain points and opportunities and suggest improvements and recommendations. Security clearance: Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)