This pre-procurement exercise is being run to engage suppliers capable of delivering all or some elements of the National Discovery Service for the NHS in England. This must include:
- A discovery layer to seamlessly connect health and care staff and learners to trusted, high-quality knowledge and evidence resources in one place, using a single search.
- Holdings management that can manage collections of content bought both nationally and locally.
- Link enhancement that provides end-users with direct access to the full text of digital holdings from multiple platforms and enables library-to-library sharing of resources under the terms of the NHS Copyright Licence Plus.
Additional information:
- The contract(s) will be for the supply of hosted services as described above
- We estimate the contract(s) to start on 1 April 2027 and that it/they will run for 3 years with optional extensions. This may be subject to change based on organisational priorities
- Suppliers will be required to collaborate to produce an effective, integrated user experience
- Systems must integrate effectively with other services in the ecosystem such as NHS OpenAthens, regional Koha library management systems, research repositories and content from diverse suppliers
- If a transition period is required between current and new suppliers then this will be accommodated within the agreed contract period
- A description of the high-level requirements can be found in the associated RFI document
- The value referenced below covers all three requirements for the initial contract period plus extensions