Provision of services to support the implementation of shared decision making and self-care programmes, personal health budgets and integrated personal commissioning, digital and remote technologies and personal health record which enable the activation and empowerment of individuals to more effectively manage their own health, care and wellbeing.

These products and services will enable people to live with greater independence, confidence and safety, and in many cases reduce the need for unplanned care.

Patient empowerment and activation digital social prescribing

Personalised care means all people have choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered, based on ‘what matters to them’, their individual strengths and diverse needs. This happens within a system that makes the most of the expertise, capacity and potential of people, families, and communities in creating better health access, outcomes and experiences.

Personalised care takes a whole-system approach, integrating services around the person. It is an all-age model, from maternity and childhood through to end of life, encompassing both mental and physical health support. It can contribute to advancing equality and reducing inequalities in access and outcomes for all.

Social prescribing is 1 of 7 key components of the NHS England comprehensive model for personalised care. The components are evidence-based and inter-linked, and defined by a standard, replicable delivery model. Social prescribing enables people to be more involved in their care and should be delivered as part of a broader shift to personalise care in primary care networks (PCNs) and local areas.

Patient empowerment and activation supported self-management

Supported self-management focuses on ‘what matters’ to the person, so they are seen within the context of their whole life, including their relationships and interests. Supported self-management measures, tools, and support can enable health systems to:

• Tailor approaches to people to best support self-management. Related to this, the workforce is more able to raise awareness of supported self-management and enable people to take ownership and responsibility for their health.
• Understand better the needs of the local population (ie segmentation and stratification). It is therefore a useful element of population health management approaches.
• Improve people’s outcomes, such as survival, wellbeing and experience.
• Better support people and keep improving the services available.
• Check that local health systems are achieving national and local priorities.
• Test different approaches to understand local priorities and where to implement supported self-management interventions.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of different interventions.

Personalised care and support planning

Personalised care and support planning involves a series of facilitated conversations in which the person, or those who know them well, actively participates to explore the management of their health and wellbeing within the context of their whole life and family situation. It is about having a different kind of conversation about health and care, which is focused on what matters to the person as well as their clinical and support needs. This leads to a single plan that is owned by the individual and accessible to those supporting the person.

The process recognises the person’s skills and strengths, as well as their experiences and the things that matter the most to them. It addresses the things that aren’t working in the person’s life and identifies outcomes and actions to resolve these. Personalised care and support planning can be used to support people with a range of physical and mental health needs, spanning across specific clinical pathways, and provides individuals with the ability to manage their health whilst enabling them to continue living the life they want.

The provision of workforce and HR software and related solutions and services that help to deliver the NHS Long Term Plan and NHS People Plan and enable the NHS to provide the highest possible quality of safe care services through optimised resource utilisation at national, regional, local system, organisational and individual site levels. All solutions must help the NHS to become a truly modern employer, enable evidence-based change, utilise national and international recognised best practice and innovations in workforce management, deployment and development of staff. Offerings may include both modular and enterprise wide solutions that support the efficient delivery of health and care services and empower the workforce with tools that NHS staff need.

The aim is that all workforce systems purchased and used by all NHS organisations meet national data and interoperability standards and as such all suppliers are expected to agree to terms that require adherence to these standards. These standards include the requirements that all workforce systems will enable access controls using single sign on, digital identity and digital passport technologies complementing the standard secure access via user names and passwords.

Related solutions and services should include, but are not limited to, solutions that:

• support multidisciplinary transformation of the health and care workforce (including doctors, nurses, midwives, allied health professionals, pharmacists, healthcare scientists, dentists, non-clinical professions, social workers and others) and all health and care professions that work together across the health and care system
• enable the full potential of the workforce by automating routine or repetitive tasks (and some complex tasks), implement machine learning and utilise augmented or artificial intelligence, including resource optimisation solutions that improve overall productivity and release time to care
• align and co-ordinate the safe transfer of permanent and temporary workers between health and social care settings by standardising processes across a health and care eco-system
• support the development of continuous feedback loops so that improvements can quickly be fed back and acted upon, making quality improvement an iterative process
• support resource management including the use of location tracking to enable worklist management, journey management and digital assignment, notification and monitoring of actions to care professionals, taking into account case load and case mix
• provide strategic, programme and project support, including advice on policy development, implementation and decommissioning
• allow integration of workforce solutions with clinical systems, electronic staff record (ESR), expenses claim solutions and external/corporate calendars (including MS Outlook/Office 365) and web enabled appointment solutions that support the management of joint electronic clinical/patient facing diaries and corporate calendars and other relevant integrations

Services within the workforce category include, but are not limited to:

eRostering, job planning, temporary staffing software solutions and digital staff passports solutions 

eRostering – Solutions, software and implementation support to enable the intelligent planning and allocation of shifts to clinical and care staff employees, based upon staff preferences, training opportunities, skill-mix and patient need. Eligible solutions will offer universal or profession and sector specific functionality; support competency-based deployment models, both within and across organisational boundaries; enable dynamic scheduling and deployment according to patient acuity and evidence-based staffing models; enable clinical teams to work more flexibly and intelligently, using mobile applications, journey planning, e-expenses and resource management tools; provide user profiles, notifications, alerts and approval processes to ensure regulatory compliance and improve payroll, HR and bank booking processes and sickness management; employ sophisticated business intelligence and reporting to improve operational and financial performance, patient pathways, productivity and talent management.

Job planning – Solutions, software and implementation support to produce multidisciplinary, service-line job plans, based upon optimal patient pathways and organisational needs. Software will be used in conjunction with appraisal and revalidation systems to record, approve and review individual employees’ duties, responsibilities, accountabilities and objectives. Solutions will be built upon business and user requirements, and encompass user profiles, notifications and approval processes. Job plans will adhere to professional contract terms and conditions and support various business functions, such as internal reporting, external recharges and streamlined payroll processes. The solutions will support sophisticated business intelligence and reporting to improve operational and financial performance, productivity and talent management.

Temporary staffing software – Software to manage bank staff registration, shift booking and notification, and payment processes. Solutions will:

• support a variety of temporary staffing models, such as direct booking and multiple application review
• integrate professional details and training records with e-rostering vacancy information to support a competency-based approach to workforce deployment
• support bank staff self-management and shift and payment tracking through a mobile application
• provide sophisticated business intelligence, to support organisations and collaborative bank partnerships to understand vacancy information, set dynamic bank rates and improve associated workforce planning and management processes

*Note, acceptance onto the framework is for the supply of software to manage the deployment of temporary staff only, it does not give the right to supply temporary staff to the NHS as an employment agency, master-vendor, or vender-neutral supplier, or as an outsourced supplier of bank staff. NHS trusts and foundation trusts may only procure temporary staff (agency or bank) from an agency on one of the frameworks approved by the NHS England Temporary Staffing team, and all workers supplied may only be procured in line with the terms and conditions of the framework.

Digital staff passports solutions – Software, solutions and related services that support staff movement between health and care organisations by enabling employment and training records to be passported between organisations and between workforce systems.

Digital staff passports are used as a secure, safe and digital method for exchanging verifiable information, in the form of verifiable credentials that can be used by employers (and their workflow systems) to confirm an individual’s status so that they do not need to unnecessarily repeat employment checks and training.

• solutions will include, but are not limited to: Be digital, and support the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model
• be modular and interoperable with multiple providers of digital wallets and enabling infrastructure of VC ecosystems
• meet or be working towards Government Digital Service (GDS) service standards, including accessibility
• enable the removal of unnecessary duplication of employment checks and training when staff move between employing organisations, whether that be temporary or permanent
• enable staff to hold a verified digital identity in accordance with Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)’s UK digital identity and attribute trust framework schemes
• comply with UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and provide passport holders with control and visibility by giving the user the ability to accept or reject information, enable them to share their information with other employers and have visibility of who they shared their information with and when
• enable the issuance of verifiable credentials, in accordance with data standards and schemas that NHS England will progressively define
• interoperate with authentication and authorisation services used by organisations, and align with identity and access control policies and standards
• enable individuals to hold verifiable credentials in ‘digital wallets’ as apps on smart phones and to present credentials to other entities
• enable the request and verification of credentials
• enable interoperability with workforce systems so they can consume verified attributes received from credentials, and so reduce the need for data entry
• may include Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions that provide a shared platform for many organisations to have a capability for issuance and verification of credentials
• may include software that enables the issuance of credentials, perhaps as part of its workflow system
• employer solutions should be vendor-neutral to allow for ease of staff movement across national, devolved nations, regional and cross-regional borders, local system, organisational and individual site levels
• allow integration/interoperability of employer solutions with current workforce systems, including but not limited to: electronic staff record (ESR), occupational health system(s), training information system(s), recruitment system(s) and e-rostering system(s) in accordance with interoperability standards that NHS England will progressively define
• enable the adherence to national data, interface and interoperability standards and governance
• enable the adoption of digital staff passports more widely, including specialist user research, product and service design, project management services

Note: A staff authentication capability is not in scope for this service line.