New firm to be brought in to ‘harden’ covid testing system

More than 20 unnamed companies are bidding for the job, which involves supporting the distribution of 30,000 covid-19 swab testing kits and – potentially — antibody tests to people’s homes. It has been tendered by NHS Digital.

It comes as home testing — which has proven controversial, with concerns about speed and resilience — is expected to be phased out for some groups, and focused mostly on people needing elective procedures in hospitals, HSJ understands. There have been concerns about many home tests not being returned; seeing very slow turnaround times; and accuracy problems.

It also comes as other aspects of the test and trace programme are coming under new public sector management, with NHSD taking a lead (see below).

According to procurement documents, the new provider must develop the “digital elements” of the government’s testing services further to “meet ongoing emerging demands and ensure this service is accessible”.

The provider must also “harden” the management of the service to make it “fully resilient, scalable and automated”.

“Effective monitoring and alerting” must also be in place, according to the tender.

Although the contract is for two years, NHS Digital expects a lot of the work to be done in the first three months of go-live, which is in mid-August.

Twenty-three companies, including 13 SMEs, are bidding for the contract.

Richard Ashcroft, programme director at NHS Digital, told HSJ: “NHS Digital worked with delivery partners at remarkable speed during the early stages of the pandemic to get the digital infrastructure in place to deliver testing at scale. This has been up and running and working well since April.

“We have now been formally asked to lead on this area as the digital service integrator. A key part of that work involves us seeking a supplier to perform the ongoing delivery of the digital services underpinning the home testing component, as well as readying the service to cater for other types of testing such as antibody testing.”

The procurement follows NHS Digital’s appointment as technology delivery partner for the government’s test and trace service, excluding work on the delayed contact tracing app.

This includes a longer-term piece of work in which NHSD will provide a manual contact tracing system, which involves contacting people who have been around others with covid symptoms and advising them to isolate.

The current manual tracing system was launched rapidly at the end of May to help manage the spread of covid-19, but it is not yet able to get information from every person who tests positive for covid-19.

NHS Digital said the current system was not designed to run over a long period of time, and hope to have their system in place by this winter.

Serco is involved in delivering the current tracing system; while Deloitte was heavily involved in the testing programme in its early stages.