£2m to get patients online

NHS England has issued a tender worth up to £2m to train 100,000 people to use online health services.

Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s director of patient and information said earlier this year that the board would launch a programme to train 100,000 citizens by April 2014, ready to benefit from the “digital revolution”.

The Health Online Programme aims to improve the way people interact with health services, via new ‘NHS digital flagship’ training centres in GP practices and hospitals.

The tender document says NHS England is looking for a management service to lead the project in a contract worth between £200,000 and £2m.

The initial contract will last until the end of the financial year, with an option to extend for two more years on an annual basis.

The statement of requirements document says NHS England wants the services to commence as soon as possible and that it is interested in adopting “fresh and innovative approaches”.

The supplier will have to develop e-learning products to support people in using online healthcare services, ensure “a consistently positive user experience” and that patients are “educated specifically in respect of their individual health needs”.

The winning organisation must establish a network of training centres called ‘community hubs’ and NHS digital flagships.

The digital flagships will be in NHS settings such as GP practices, hospitals and health centres while the community hubs will be in libraries and community centres.

“These should be established centres providing supported online access in areas recognised as experiencing health inequalities and testing of approaches to enable closer working between health locations and the community hubs,” the document says.

The provider will also be required to build a data bank of case studies focusing on the positive experience of going online and ensure that the training centres are marketed to engage customers.

NHS England is also launching Code4Health later this year, which will teach both patients and healthcare professionals how to code and make apps.