According to the NHS ICS Design Framework, NHS England will make financial allocations to every ICS. The spending decisions at the system level and budget distribution across partner organisations will then be the responsibility of each ICS.
From April 2022, thanks to the new Health and Social Care Levy, UK-wide healthcare funding will rise by a record £36 billion over the next 3 years. The new funding includes a commitment to ring-fence an additional £8 billion to fund waiting list recovery – the biggest catch-up programme in NHS history.
The levy funding is on top of the government’s previous historic long-term settlement for the NHS, which will see NHS funding increase by £33.9 billion to a total of £148.5 billion by 2023 to 2024, which has been enshrined in law.
At the time of writing this blog, it’s not evident how much funding each ICS will be allocated. However, we do know that Systems with the least mature digital infrastructure will be granted a significant portion of funding.
Despite the lack of clarity around exact ICS budget allocations, we can turn to NHSX for specifics on digital spending plans throughout the ICS transition via the Unified Tech Fund.
This prospectus outlines the scope and criteria for application to the various national funds that seek to:
Please note that the closing dates shown refer to the deadline for ICS buyers to apply for funding, not the deadline for suppliers to get involved.
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Each fund within the UTF will need to distribute the allocated budget to each ICS region. At the time of writing this report, the only fund to have released information on where money is flowing across the UK is the Elective Recovery Technology (ERT) fund.
We expect the breakdown of budget allocation within each UTF to be announced as we approach the new July 1 deadline.
The table below explains the ERT funding distribution across the UK. The ICSs within these regions will then be allocated a portion of this funding depending on the maturity of their existing ERT infrastructure.
To help suppliers stay ahead of their competition, we’ve created the Stotles ERT opportunity feed; a feed of existing and upcoming ERT initiatives across a handful of ICSs across the UK. Use this feed to keep track of opportunities as soon as they hit the market, or chat to our team about curating a feed of opportunities relevant to your business.
Once ICSs take legal shape in July 2022, we’ll learn more about how each of the ICS regions will receive funding and how it will be allocated across the 42 IC organisations across the country. To learn more about the geographical landscape of ICSs, read this blogpost. LINK
Despite the current ambiguity on overall funding, one thing is clear: the ICS transition will result in a tremendous amount of funding toward digitising the NHS, creating an enormous number of opportunities for technology suppliers to work with the public sector. For a deeper look into another fund making waves in the space; the Targeted Investment Fund, read this blogpost.
To learn more about the ICS transition, download our in-depth report; Digitising a changing NHS: The opportunities emerging for tech suppliers through the ICS transition, or sign up to Stotles today.
