Suppliers doubled on Digital Capability for Health framework

The Crown Commercial Service has included twice the number of suppliers in the latest version of its Digital Capability for Health framework.

A contract award notice for the framework, published on 8 January 2025, revealed that 22 companies are on the list, an increase from 11 on the first iteration which launched in early 2021.

The deal represents a “pan-public sector agreement for the provision of application development and management service for public health and social care programmes”, according to the notice.

It came into effect on 12 November 2024 and will run for three years, ending on 11 November 2027. The projected value of the contract is £1.2bn.

The Digital Capability for Health framework 2 is a single lot, which includes five service provisions within it:

1. Development and operations (DevOps) – for ongoing minor improvements of live services
2. Digital definition services – creating and progressing the project through discovery and alpha phases
3. Build and transition services – building the services using beta and live phases
4. End-to-end development services – designing and developing the services from discovery to live phases
5. Data management (and similar) services – for performing data collection, data processing and analysis and management data and services

The companies on the new version of the framework are Accenture, Aire Logic, Atos IT Services, Birlasoft (UK), BJSS, Burendo, Capgmemini, Caution Your Blast, Cognizant Worldwide, Ernst & Young, Hippo Digital, IBM UK, Informed Solutions, Kainos Software, Mastek (UK), Netcompany, Opencast Software Europe, Pricewaterhousecoopers, CACI, Scott Logic, Softwire Technology and Thoughtworks.

This second version of the framework represents a rise of almost £500,000 compared with the estimated £960m worth of the first iteration of the arrangement. That deal expires in July 2025 after being extended by six months, taking its total lifespan to four and a half years.

The original deal was initially awarded to 12 companies in January 2021, but the supplier base dropped by one after Accenture acquired Infinity Works Consulting, one of the other firms featured on the agreement.

NHS England signed contracts with two of the companies on the framework in August 2024 to support the digital transformation of urgent and emergency care (UEC), totalling £86 million in value.

A three-year contract which began on 15 August 2024, with a value of between £28.1 million and £37.4m, was awarded to Kainos Software to support the transformational activities of the digital UEC team.

A second NHSE contract was awarded to Accenture to support the continuous iteration activities in the digital UEC portfolio, which focuses on all products and services under the umbrella of digital UEC.