techUK and NHS Digital Celebrate One Year of Working Together in Partnership

4 Dec 2017 02:55 PM

In October, techUK and NHS Digital celebrated the one year anniversary of their strategic partnership. The aim of the partnership is to ensure industry can begin to plan for what is required from them and gear up for potential opportunities whilst providing valuable input into the Personalised Health and Care 2020 programmes of work.

techUK CEO, Julian David said, “This has been a great year of partnership working with NHS Digital. Our members tell us that the partnership has already achieved a significant shift towards a more transparent and collaborative way of working with industry. We look forward to deepening the engagement as we work together to deliver better health and care outcomes for the UK population.”

Ben Gregory, Senior Commercial Lead at NHS Digital said, “Engagement with suppliers has help our programme in a number of ways. It’s fair to say that we wouldn’t have been able to proceed with the programme in the way we have without that supplier engagement.”

Highlights and Achievements – transforming the way in which industry accesses and consumes NHS Digital services

Highlights and achievements 1

Over the past year, the partnership has held 27 joint events with over 1600 delegates through the door. It also established three joint initiatives including the Supplier Information Exchange which has allowed NHS Digital to understand Industry needs and produce a clickable Alpha prototype digital service that would answer these needs. The partnership has also successfully run 7 consultations, set up a formal issue management process, and launched the Industry Briefings Platform, which is an easily accessible record of the events and consultations with downloadable media. This is a large shift from the pre-partnership days of, no formal engagement between NHS Digital and Industry, lack of information and limited access to NHS Digital services, and no escalation route for industry to raise and address issues.

Highlights and achievements 2

What next for the partnership?

Building on the work of the past year, the partnership will focus on deepening industry engagement at a strategic level with NHS Digital programmes. The partnership priorities for the next six months include a greater emphasis on working with SMEs, a focus on interoperability and cyber security, and collaboration with the wider community at the local level to include Trusts, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs). The partnership will also look to future tech and horizon scanning to determine the art of the possible for the NHS going forward.

techUK is delighted to have established an excellent working relationship with NHS Digital in a relatively short timeframe. There has been a significant shift in perception of the relationship between NHS Digital and Industry towards a more collaborative way of working. We look forward to deepening this engagement as the partnership develops over the coming year.