The UK arm of Canadian technology company CGI has been awarded a £47.66m contract to support the development of a national single patient record (SPR).
The 12-month contract, which began on November 2 and may be extended for a year past the initial November 1, 2027 deadline, is to “establish secure, scalable, modern, and interoperable national digital infrastructure” aligned with NHS England’s (NHSE) Transforming and Connecting Care (TCC) programme, of which the SPR is the core component.
The contract states that CGI will build “core operational components of the SPR... including initiating the operational patient-level datastore, data ingestion pipelines, and user-facing APIs, and supporting capabilities such as authorisation and audit. Integration will be made with key user-facing systems, including [the National Care Records Service, or NCRS]”.
CGI is to develop the core SPR platform and core record during the contract period, as well as “initial service transformation areas” relating to maternity and frailty care.
It will also develop a Clinician360 product to support “clinician access to consolidated, pathway-specific patient view” and lay the initial groundwork for a Patient360 product “supporting patient access via NHS App-aligned service”.
The SPR will be delivered through multiple companies with no single supplier dominating, the Government has confirmed. Forthcoming contracts will be awarded over the next two years.
By April 2027, NHSE hopes to allow clinicians to see medical histories for at least 80 per cent of patients.
NHSE said the SPR will provide “secure, default access to a consolidated health record, available to patients via the NHS App and to clinicians in their EPRs via the NCRS,” adding: “The ambition is to integrate clinical, genomic, lifestyle, and social data to support personalised, predictive, and preventative care.
“SPR is supported by policy development, public engagement, connected care records, and GP integration.
“The ambition is to enable patients to read, write, share, and audit their records.”
The NHS App is described as a “key dependency” of the SPR.
Following a November 10 House of Lords briefing on the SPR, the Royal College of Physicians said: “A single patient record has real potential to improve the experience of both patients and clinicians, supporting safer, better coordinated care across different parts of the health service.
“As these proposals develop, it will be important that the system works for patients and the healthcare professionals caring for them, while maintaining trust in how people’s health information is accessed and used.”
Related: Health secretary defends single patient record amid privacy concerns
