GPSoC tender worth £1.2 billion

The Department of Health has tendered for a new GP Systems of Choice framework worth up to £1.2 billion over two years.

GPSoC is a framework contract which funds GP IT systems for more than 80% of practices in England.

The framework expired in March, but an extension has been agreed until a new contract is in place, which is expected to be by end of this year.

The tender is split into three lots.

The first, ‘GP clinical IT systems and subsidiary modules’, will be centrally funded and is worth between £300m – £770m.

This covers the core GP clinical IT system suppliers that must offer things like; consultation and record management; prescribing; core appointment and document management and national services such as Choose and Book, GP2GP and the Electronic Prescribing Service.

Lot one also covers subsidiary clinical systems and services that interoperate with the principal systems.

This opens up the market for third-party suppliers to provide patient transactional services, patient clinician communication and patient record access.

Also, mobile clinical applications, decision support and telehealth, but these categories are yet to be defined.

Bidders for lot one can apply to offer a single system or multiple and can expand the scope of their offering during the life of the contract, which is two years.

The second lot is for ‘additional GP IT services’ and includes things like; patient arrival systems; physical device APIs; finance systems; hardware system maintenance and hardware.

These services will be funded locally at a cost of £20m-£220m.

The final lot is for ‘cross care setting interoperable services’ and covers services that interoperate between systems used in care settings inside and outside of the GP practice.

“This lot will provide a mechanism for pairs or larger groupings of suppliers to demonstrate effective interoperability and to offer a call off service for local organisations to draw down proven services for local adaptation and use,” the tender says.

“The authority will not specify requirements for these services and systems. However, there will be minimum standards that all systems and services must meet in order to be offered for use on the framework.”

This lot will also be funded locally and is valued at £5m- £220m.

Requests to participate must be received by 4 July.

The Memorandum of Information is due to be published shortly.