DHSC: Abortion Notification Service (ANS) Beta Procurement

DHSC is looking for a delivery partner for a Beta phase of a new Abortion Notification Service (ANS). The core aim is to build, test, and refine a new ANS service that will:

(1) Enable registered medical practitioners to securely and efficiently submit HSA4s to DHSC.

(2) Enable DHSC to monitor compliance if the Abortion Act 1967.

(3) Support robust monitoring and continual improvement of abortion care services.

(4) Enable the publication of anonymised data to inform public health policy and support research.

The Beta phase will involve build, test, and improvement to a new service through private and public beta. The service must support submissions via 3 channels (webform, API, and paper), ensure secure data handling, and meet GDS standards. The service currently has

around 1500 total users (external and internal) and processes around 250,000 notifications per year. The proposed solution includes the following service components:

(1) Web Front-end: used by abortion care providers to create, view, authorise, and submit HSA4s.

(2) A SOAP API Service (already in use): used to integrate with the clinics back-office ERP systems using a dll to support the create API submissions.

(3) Back Office System: used by ANS team to validate, approve and return HSA4 forms

(4) User Administration Tools: used to manage who can access the service and perform identity-proofing for external users.

Additionally, the following functionality needs to be scoped further:

(1) Digitising Paper HSA4 Forms: we have an enduring statutory requirement to collect and process paper HSA4s. This is currently done using specialist scanning and OCR technology

(2) Secure Environment and Data Visualisation Tools for Data Analysis - provide a secure environment to store frozen datasets. Must be able to allow data analysts to transform complex datasets into actionable insights for publication.