Redesigning Medicines Workflows: Automation and Decision Support for Medicines Management

Tender description

PRELIMINARY MARKET CONSULTATION This document is part of preliminary market engagement and does not constitute a regulated procurement contract. It is intended this notice is used to understand potential business partnering opportunities with research partners. This Preliminary Market Consultation (PMC) notice seeks to explore existing and emerging digital solutions that could support a change in how medicines are managed across NHS Scotland. Scotland’s health and care system is facing rising demand, workforce constraints and increasing care complexity. Medicines play a critical role in supporting people in Scotland to live healthier lives, yet the systems and workflows underpinning medicines and their management have not evolved at the same pace as demand or digital capability. A growing proportion of the population now require repeat prescription medicines, with activity continuing to rise as people live longer and with multiple long term conditions. This has driven a significant increase in routine, medicines related work - much of which is administrative, repetitive and low risk, but currently consumes large amounts of skilled clinical professional time. While some paper based processes have been digitised, this has often resulted in digital versions of paper workflows rather than true redesign. Current approaches limit the delivery of good, proactive, well-connected care. They also limit best use of clinical expertise across primary, secondary and community settings. This PMC focuses on two linked value improvement scopes: a. Routine medicines tasks – such as repeat prescribing, which account for a substantial proportion of general practitioner and pharmacy team workload and are well suited to safer, smarter digitally enabled decision supported approaches. b. Medicines reconciliation at points of care transition – particularly when people move between hospital and community settings, where accuracy is critical for patient safety but processes are often complex, fragmented and time consuming. Together, these challenges contribute to inefficiency, risk and unsustainable pressure on the workforce. These workflows present a necessary opportunity for redesign using automation, digital triage and clinical decision support. Introducing, testing and evaluating new or emerging technologies could: - Release significant clinical time for direct patient care - Improve safety and reduce medicines related harm - Support more consistent and high quality decision making - Improve staff experience and system sustainability Notice summary High administrative burden: Routine medicines activities -particularly repeat prescribing - consume a large proportion of GP and pharmacy time, diverting skilled professionals from direct patient care. Risk at care transitions: The transfer of medicines information between care settings can be complex, with the potential to create challenges for patient safety and staff. Limited use of intelligent digital tools: Many current systems support basic digitisation rather than intelligent automation, with limited use of rules based processing, digital triage or decision support. Growing demand and workforce pressures: Rising prescription volumes and workforce constraints mean current approaches are increasingly unsustainable without meaningful redesign. Responses are welcome from organisations of any type and size, including those based in the UK, EU and EEA. This notice relates solely to a Preliminary Market Consultation (PMC) and is for information‑gathering purposes only. It does not commit the authority to proceed with any subsequent procurement. Should the authority decide to pursue any future procurement activity, this would follow the appropriate procurement route and would be entirely separate from this notice. Any future participation would require a separate application where applicable via the relevant host website. 2260000 This notice is being utilised to assist in understanding the current market. If you are interested in the opportunity, then please record your interest using the appropriate button on Public Contracts Scotland. There is an opportunity to participate in a questionnaire to support the authority’s understanding of the current market, existing capabilities and potential approaches relevant to the scope of this Preliminary Market Consultation. Following an internal review of questionnaire responses and expressions of interest, the authority may invite selected organisations to take part in an engagement discussion via Microsoft Teams. Any such engagement may involve representatives from NHS Scotland, including the NHS Innovation Hub's, National Procurement team and relevant subject matter experts. Any engagement sessions or discussions will be exploratory and non‑binding in nature. To access the questionnaire template, organisations should select “Record your interest” for this Notice on Public Contracts Scotland. This will enable access to the available documents located in the “Additional Documents” tab under “Additional Notice Options”. Completed questionnaires must be submitted via the PCS “Postbox” function for this Notice. Guidance on submitting responses via the Postbox can be found in the “Supplier User Guide – Postbox”, available within the “Help” section of the Supplier Area on PCS. Any questions relating to this Preliminary Market Consultation should be submitted using the Questions and Answers function within PCS for this Notice. Organisations experiencing difficulties in using the Public Contracts Scotland system are advised to contact PCS Technical Support well in advance of any submission deadline: Telephone: 0800 222 9003 Opening hours: 08:30 – 17:00