NHS Scotland is planning a major cloud integration procurement, seeking a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution for finance, HR, payroll, and procurement functions across all its boards.

A tender has revealed that NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) is seeking a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, along with a systems integrator to support the design, delivery, and rollout of the solution.

The notice was published on May 19, with an estimated total value of £206M, excluding VAT for a 15 year contract.

Interested parties can request to participate in the contract by 18 June. SaaS and System Integrator suppliers must enter ‘bidding partnerships’ to apply and offer a cohesive solution and delivery approach.

The competitive procedure will result in two national contracts: one between NSS and the technology vendor, and another between NSS and the systems integrator. Suppliers must form bidding partnerships from the outset to deliver a cohesive solution and implementation approach.

The proposed budget will be split, with £120m given directly to the cloud-based SaaS solution, and the rest spent on implementation costs.

The Scottish Government’s health digitisation plans says that it plans to complete the full roll out of a new National GP IT system, moving to a single cloud hosted solution by 2026.

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The Scottish Government’s launch of a Cloud First health and care strategy – which was due by March 2024 – was delayed as the Technical Design Authority took over following a budget review.

Back in May 2024, the NSS contracted OneAdvanced Health and Care’s cloud-based software as a document workflow solution across GP practices in Scotland.

NHS England is also pushing for more cloud integration, as the health service confirmed in January 2024 that physical data centres were decommissioned to favour cloud as the host of the NHS Spine, a secure data information sharing service used across various NHS services.

The NSS says that other cloud-oriented plans are on track, such as bringing together cloud-based digital components together to ease sharing across different systems, and issuing a cloud-based document management system for GPs.