Suppliers have started to be appointed to NHS England’s Health Systems Support Framework, which has been designed to support integrated care and population health management.

The framework has been developed by NHS England to help sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) and integrated care systems (ICSs) procure integrated care records and advanced analytics needed for population health management, as per NHS England’s Five Year Forward View.

It is hoped the framework will help create a “one-stop shop” for STPs and ICSs by having “pre-approved” industry suppliers which can help their population health management digital plans.

In theory this will make it quicker and cheaper for organisations to procure technology, as much of the work involved in screening organisations and sorting out legal details will already have been done.

InterSystems, Allscripts, Orion Health and Cerner have all be appointed to various lots of the framework.

Steve Brain, vice president and managing director, Allscripts UK, said: “[The framework] will make it significantly easier and quicker for organisations to procure the solutions they need to make a real difference to the health and care service and to its patients and users.”

The framework is structured around three areas: infrastructure, insight, and impact and intervention.

This includes supporting the move towards health risk stratification, whereby algorithms can be used to identify people at risk of developing health problems and being admitted to hospital.

James Ormonde, sales director at Orion, said: “Too many health and social care services are still delivered in silos. Bringing them together, and making sure they wrap around the individual, will make a huge difference to organisations and to patients.”

A similar structure could be planned for GP IT systems, after NHS Digital published a prior information notice to kick-start interest in the new Digital Care Services framework, which will replace the outgoing GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) agreement.

Dubbed GP IT Futures, the £450 million contract will provide a contract vehicle for GPs, CCGs and other NHS Digital customers to purchase IT systems and services, managed by the national body.

The new framework will extend support to community and mental health providers, as well as to emerging models of care such as GP federations and integrated care organisations.