Provision of Southwest Secure Data Environment (SDE) to NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (ICB)

The South West Sub National SDE (SW-SDE) is part of NHS England's "Data Saves Lives" strategy, requiring each region to establish a Sub-National Secure Data Environment for health and care research. The SW-SDE covers 6 integrated care systems (including hundreds of data controllers), who are engaged through a well established leadership board. The SW-SDE is hosted by Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) Integrated Care Board. Preparations for the build phase had been completed, including receiving ethical approvals, assembling a core team, and finalizing governance models.

The NHSE programme required a minimum viable product build of the SW-SDE by March 2025, scaling to a small scale SDE throughout 25/26 to conduct user testing and delivery of initial research cases. BNSSG ICB were therefore seeking a partner to support them to deliver a tenancy and processing layer that had the capability to link and safely store data in the cloud. Due to ambitious timeframes, the partner should have a ready built SDE model to implement. This phase will ingest real-world data and require the highest security standards.

The procurement followed the procurement process as set out in the buying process for the G Cloud 14 framework.

Funding of £100,000 is available for a 12-month contract, with a further £100,000 as an optional 12-month extension, at the commissioner's discretion.

This procurement has been carried out by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW) on behalf of the Commissioners.