Primary Care Tech Innovation Standard
Background
As part of the move to modernise core clinical systems for Primary Care, NHS Digital have been engaging Suppliers around our Modern Technology Standards. These standards and the NHS Architecture Principles lay out the future ways of working and technology we want to see developing to serve the needs of Primary Care and simplify the complexity of healthcare systems provision.
The purpose of the Technical Innovation standard is to signal to suppliers the technical perspective for new to market Foundation solutions.
We are we doing this because:
- We have a clear strategy of Application and Data separation
- We want to leverage modern technology and ways of working to improve the resilience, scale, sustainability and the improvements for incremental continuous delivery that they enable
- Bring together an ecosystem of systems that work better together based around open standards
- Deliver systems that are a delight to use for users
- Help us be more responsive to the increasing demands of patient facing services
- Reduce the number of technical standards and data formats to drive standardisation and reduce our technical debt and cost of change
- Encourage systems that can be used on many devices across different care settings with minimal setup or change
Outline Plan
This Standard is being introduced via the Tech Innovation Framework (TIF). Suppliers on this Framework will have to meet this standard in full before they can go live with their solution. The Tech Innovation Standard introduces a number of new mandatory interfaces and APIs. To support this, the related Interoperability Standards will also be updated.
For Suppliers on other Frameworks there is no action required at this point.
Summary of Change
The Primary Care Tech Innovation Standard will be Published via the Digital Care Services (DCS) roadmap and introduced via the Tech Innovation Framework. All solutions on this framework will have to meet this standard. Solutions on other DCS frameworks will not be affected by the introduction of this standard but should consider it as signalling where we may want Suppliers to take their solutions in the future. The Technical Innovation Standard is to be considered as a new interim Overarching Standard. The content may eventually be rolled into the overarching and interoperability standards. The scope of it includes internet First, Public Cloud, Browser Based Applications, NHS Identity (CIS2), NHS Login for Patient Administration, Modern User Experience, Open APIs and NHS Development guidelines.
Full Specification
The Tech Innovation Standard can be found here: Primary Care Technology Innovation Standard
Interoperability Standards relating to the Primary Care Technology Innovation Standard:
Assurance Approach
Only Tech Innovation Framework Suppliers will be assured against this standard. There is guidance set out on what assurance proof will be required in the body of the Standard.