GP IT Futures Capabilities & Standards
Click on relevant Capability, Overarching Standard or Context Specific Standard below to view further information. If you are new to this Wiki, please view the Introduction to Capabilities link below, before proceeding.
To view a short description for a Capability and any associated Capability Specific Standards click 'More'.
To access videos to support Suppliers, click here.
To access guidance for Buyers, click here.
For an Interactive Capability and Standards Map showing all connections between the GP IT Futures Capabilities and Standards, click here.
What are Capabilities?
The requirements to deliver General Practice Solutions are grouped into Capabilities. Each Capability describes a business need at the highest level. For example, 'Recording Consultations' describes the need for General Practice staff to be able to make a digital record of any consultation with a patient. The introduction of Capabilities for GP IT is intended to allow suppliers to innovate by being less prescriptive and to segment the requirements in a way to allow more flexibility and choice for buyers.
Capabilities will be used by:
- NHS Digital to express the business needs during the procurement
- NHS Digital for the initial assessment of Solutions for onboarding to the Buying Catalogue
- Suppliers to categorise their products and to see market opportunities
- Buyers to search for products that meet their needs on the Buying Catalogue
What are Standards?
Standards describe the technical or operating conditions required to achieve Catalogue Compliance.
Standards will be used by:
- NHS Digital to express the business needs at the most granular level when needed
- Suppliers to understand what is expected of them in order to be compliant and to onboard onto the Buying Catalogue
- NHS Digital Solution Assurance to assess Supplier Solutions against in order to award compliance
- Buyers to assess various Suppliers against each other (levels of compliance / functionality) for competitive procurements.
How are Capabilities structured?
The Capabilities and Standards are structured in the model below.
- There are a set of Overarching Standards that are applicable to all supplier Solutions e.g. Information Governance
- There are Capabilities to support business continuity from GPSoC and new Capabilities to support new ways of working
- There are Capability Specific Standards which sit under a Capability (e.g. Prescribing)
- There are Context Specific Standards that only apply to certain Capabilities or in certain situations (e.g. Common Reporting)
- There is also an Interoperability Standard which contains elements specific to all and discreet Capabilities
Do I have to build a solution that delivers all Capabilities?
Suppliers do not have to provide a Solution that delivers all Capabilities and are free to design and build Solutions that meet one or more of the Capabilities. By looking at the Capabilities, Suppliers can see where their product portfolio fits, either by making tweaks to existing Solutions where required or building new Solutions to expand the Capabilities that they provide for. For example, Supplier 'A' may build a Solution that delivers 'Document Management', 'Workflow' and 'Patient Information Maintenance' Capabilities, whereas Supplier 'B' may choose to build a Solution that delivers all the Citizen Capabilities.
A set of Foundation Capabilities have been identified which will be the access point for GMS funding. These are a subset of the wider set of Capabilities mandated in the NHS England GP IT Operating Model. The Foundation Capabilities are clearly identified on the Capabilities and Standards Model. Suppliers do not have to supply any of the Foundation Capabilities and can choose to provide one or more. Buyers will have to take all of the Foundation Capabilities in order to access central funding.
For further information, please see Introduction to Capabilities and Standards.
Overarching Standards | Capabilities that can only be offered as full Capabilities | Capabilities that can either be offered as full or partial | ||
Apply to all Capabilities | ||||
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery More... Ensures that suppliers Solutions are supported by robust business continuity plans and disaster recovery measures. | Appointments Management - GP More... Supports the administration, scheduling, resourcing and reporting of Appointments. Capability Specific Standards: | More... Enables Citizens to manage their Appointments online. Supports the use of Appointment Slots that have been configured in Appointments Management - GP. Capability Specific Standards: | Clinical Decision Support More... Supports clinical decision-making to improve Patient safety at the point of care. Capability Specific Standards: | Telehealth More... Enables Citizens and Patients that use health monitoring Solutions to share monitoring data with health and care professionals to support remote delivery of care and increase self-care outside of clinical settings. |
Clinical Safety More... Supports the management of clinical risk and Patient safety. | Referral Management More... Supports recording, reviewing, sending, and reporting of Patient Referrals. Enables Referral information to be included in the Patient Record. Capability Specific Standards: | Prescription Ordering – Citizen More... Enables Citizens to request medication online and manage nominated and preferred Pharmacies for Patients. Capability Specific Standards: | Communicate with Practice - Citizen More... Supports secure and trusted electronic communications between Citizens and the Practice. Integrates with Patient Information Maintenance. Capability Specific Standards: | Unstructured Data Extraction More... Enables automated and manual interpretation and extraction of structured data from paper documents and unstructured electronic documents to support their classification and matching with Patient Records. Capability Specific Standards: |
Commercial More... This Standard underpins all commercial activity relating to the Catalogue. It does this by defining a number of rules governing the commercial relationship of relevant parties and by setting out standards of behaviour and principles of access to data and services charges. | Resource Management More... Supports the management and reporting of Practice information, resources, Staff Members and related organisations. Also enables management of Staff Member availability and inactivity. Capability Specific Standards: | View Record - Citizen More... Enables Citizens to view their Patient Record online. Capability Specific Standards: | Reporting More... Enables reporting and analysis of data from other Capabilities in the Practice Solution to support clinical care and Practice management. Capability Specific Standards: | Workflow More... Supports manual and automated management of work in the Practice. Also supports effective planning, tracking, monitoring and reporting. Capability Specific Standards: |
Data Migration More... Supports the secure migration of Practice data between Solutions. | Patient Information Maintenance More... Supports the registration of Patients and the maintenance of all Patient personal information. Supports the organisation and presentation of a comprehensive Patient Record. Also supports the management of related persons and configuring access to Citizen Services. Capability Specific Standards: | Communication Management More... Supports the delivery and management of communications to Citizens and Practice staff. Capability Specific Standards: | Caseload Management More... Supports the allocation of appropriate Health and Care Professionals to Patients/Service Users in need of support, ensuring balanced workloads and the efficient use of staff and other resources. | Medicines Optimisation More... Supports clinicians and pharmacists in reviewing a Patient's medication and requesting changes to medication to ensure the Patient is taking the best combination of medicines. |
Data Standards More... Defines detailed technical standards for the storage, management and organisation of data and specifies standardised reference data, terminology and codes. | Prescribing More... Supports the effective and safe prescribing of medical products and appliances to Patients. Information to support prescribing will be available. Capability Specific Standards: | Digital Diagnostics More... Supports electronic requesting with other healthcare organisations. Test results can be received, reviewed and stored against the Patient Record. Capability Specific Standards: | Cross-organisation Appointment Booking More... Enables Appointments to be made available and booked across Organisational boundaries, creating flexibility for Health and Care Professionals and Patients/Service Users. | Personal Health Budget More... Enables a Patient/Service User to set up and manage a Personal Health Budget giving them more choice and control over the management of their identified healthcare and well-being needs. |
Training More... Defines the training activities and collateral expected from Suppliers to support the buyers and users of their Solutions. | Recording Consultations More... Supports the standardised recording of Consultations and other General Practice activities. Also supports the extraction of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) data for the FGM data set. Capability Specific Standards: | Document Management More... Supports the secure management and classification of all forms unstructured electronic documents including those created by scanning paper documents. Also enables processing of documents and matching documents with Patients. Capability Specific Standards: | Cross-organisation Workflow Tools More... Supports and automates clinical and business processes across Organisational boundaries to make processes and communication more efficient. | Personal Health Record More... Enables a Patient/Service User to manage and maintain their own Electronic Health Record and to share that information with relevant Health and Care Professionals. |
Hosting & Infrastructure More... Supports best practices for infrastructure and hosting of systems. For example, ensuring that systems are cost effective, secure and energy efficient. | GP Extracts Verification More... Supports Practice staff in ensuring accuracy of the data that is used with the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS). Capability Specific Standards: | Cross-organisation Workforce Management More... Supports the efficient planning and scheduling of the health and care workforce to ensure that services can be delivered effectively by the right staff. | Population Health Management More... Enables Organisations to accumulate, analyse and report on Patient healthcare data to identify improvement in care and identify and track Patient outcomes. | |
Information Governance More... Supports the controls needed to ensure that sensitive Personal Data is kept confidential, is accurate and is available to authorised users when required. | Scanning More... Support the conversion of paper documentation into digital format preserving the document quality and structure. | Data Analytics for Integrated and Federated Care More... Supports the analysis of multiple and complex datasets and presentation of the output to enable decision-making, service design and performance management. | Productivity More... Supports Patients/Service Users and Health and Care Professionals by delivering improved efficiency or experience related outcomes. | |
Non-Functional Questions More... Enables NHS Digital to assess the risk associated with the Compliance Assessment of the Solution against appropriate Overarching Standards. | Medicines Verification More... Supports compliance with the Falsified Medicines Directive and minimise the risk that falsified medicinal products are supplied to the public. | Domiciliary Care More... Enables Service Providers to effectively plan and manage Domiciliary Care services to ensure care needs are met and that Care Workers can manage their schedule. | Risk Stratification More... Supports Health and Care Professionals by providing tools to calculate risk levels for Patients, informing interventions to achieve better Patient outcomes. | |
Testing More... Ensures that Suppliers' software delivery test processes are of sufficient quality and rigour. | e-Consultations (Professional to Professional) More... Enables the communication and sharing of specialist knowledge and advice between Health and Care Professionals to support better care decisions and professional development. | Shared Care Plans More... Enables the maintenance of a single, shared care plan across multiple Organisations to ensure more co-ordinated working and more efficient management of activities relating to the Patient/Service User's health and care. | ||
Service Management More... Supports suppliers in the delivery and management of services that support and provide their Solutions. | Unified Care Record More... Provides a consolidated view to Health and Care Professionals of a Patient/Service User's complete and up-to-date records, sourced from various health and care settings. | Social Prescribing More... Supports the referral of Patients/Service Users to non-clinical services to help address their health and well-being needs. | ||
Care Homes More... Enables a record of the Resident’s health and care needs to be maintained and shared with parties who are involved in providing care, to support decision making and the effective planning and delivery of care. | Telecare More... Supports the monitoring of Patients/Service Users or their environment to ensure quick identification and response to any adverse event. | |||
Dispensing More... Supports the timely and effective dispensing of medical products and appliances to Patients. | ||||
Context Specific Standards | Key | |||
| Apply to some Capabilities | ||||
Interoperability Standard More... Defines a comprehensive set of standards, interfaces and protocols that Solutions and systems will use when interoperating. | Common Reporting More... Supports the reporting needs that are common to General Practices and includes searchable report templates. | Citizen Access More... Supports Citizens to access their services safely and securely. Also supports Citizens in viewing and updating Patient information online. | Management Information (MI) Reporting More... Supports the submission of aggregated counts of information regarding Citizen Services, Appointments, Prescriptions and documents to NHS Digital. | Overarching Standards |
| Foundation Capabilities | ||||
| Other Capabilities | ||||
| New Capabilities | ||||
| Other Standards | ||||