A tender has been announced for a £168.1m contract to run the NHS’s email system over a five year period.

The outline business case for “NHSmail 2” – to replace the current service provided by Vodafone – was approved last month.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre, which oversees the 650,000-user service on behalf of the Department for Health and NHS England, said the new contract would be interoperable with other secure email services with the aim to promote collaboration between those working in different care settings.

A framework notice will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union by the Crown Commercial Service – the new Cabinet Office body that handles government procurement – later this month.

NHSmail project manager Mark Reynolds said the information centre wanted to offer encryption as a standard feature so emails could be sent safely to insecure email services.

Firms looking to run the service must allow users to “remotely store and share documents in a secure manner” – a function that does not currently exist.

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