NHSmail2 procurement this year

The procurement of NHSmail2 will start this year, using the Public Services Network framework.

Alex Abbott, NHS England’s chief technology officer, told EHI the organisation has extended its contract for NHSmail with Cable and Wireless until June next year.

It expects to start a procurement for version two of the mail service towards the end of this year. This will most likely be done by creating a secure email ‘lot’ on the PSN framework.

The team leading the re-procurement had considered using the G-Cloud framework, but Abbott said current thinking was that PSN would be more appropriate.

Suppliers will apply to be accredited for the secure email lot and NHS England will run a competition between them for the NHSmail replacement.

“The PSN team will define the lot that will appear on the catalogue, and that will potentially be open to other government departments to use as well,” he said.

The outcome is likely to be a single supplier for the new service. However, Abbott said that NHS England has done a lot of work with NHSmail users to find out what they want from the new service.

The new product is likely to be a core service that organisations will be able to ‘top up’ with additional services, such as cloud based storage and larger mailbox sizes.

The NHS had email before NHSmail, but it was one of the first, national services to be delivered after the launch of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

It created a national directory service and an email address for life. Every month, around 250m messages are sent and received through the service.

A Department of Health summary of the benefits of national programmes says NHSmail will cost around £300m by the end of its programme life in March 2015.

The DH estimates that, in return, it will reap around £350m in benefits. By March 2012, when the documents on which the benefits statement was based were drawn up, £240m had been spent and £280m in benefits identified.

The nine year contract with Cable and Wireless was worth £29.3m a year when it was awarded in 2004, with a user base that stood at 65,000.

EHI reported at the time that the value of the contract would rise to £50m- £90m a year when all NHS users were connected.

In March, Abbott told EHI that NHSmail had 800,000 registered users, of which 500,000 used it regularly, with 15,000 new users coming on board each month.

However, the figures suggest the contract value remained at around £30m a year.

The final benefits statement on NPfIT says: “NHSmail is a good example of national infrastructure provided through the programme replacing existing, locally provided services.

“As a result of the introduction of NHSmail, 1,482 local email services have so far been decommissioned, resulting in reduced costs and a more secure way of exchanging clinical information across organisational boundaries.

“NHSmail also supports the booking process through provision of SMS text reminders, which are provided free to users.

“A survey in 2011 indicated that nearly 35% of the SMS messages sent via NHSmail are in the form of patient reminders, contributing to reducing the number of missed appointments andas a result, reducing wasted clinical and administrative time.”

Read an interview with Alex Abbott, who will be speaking at EHI Live 2013, in Insight.

Alex Abbott and his NHS England colleague Beverley Bryant will be speaking at EHI Live 2013 in a new ‘paperless or paper-lite’ stream. Their boss, Tim Kelsey, the national director of patients and information, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s conference, which is free for all visitors to attend.