Summary

• NHS England estimates the Digital Primary Care Open Framework at £838.75 million excluding VAT, or £1.006 billion including VAT.
• Foundation electronic patient record systems account for £649.45 million, with £135.30 million for clinical and operational support.
• A £54 million research and development lot will support work on emerging capabilities and standards.

NHS England is preparing an £838.75 million primary care technology framework excluding VAT, bringing core GP patient records, clinical software and research into an open procurement intended to widen the supplier market.

The Digital Primary Care Open Framework was disclosed through a planned procurement notice published on 6 October. NHS England expects to issue the tender in November, subject to final governance approvals, with the framework scheduled to begin in September 2027.

The estimated value rises to just over £1.006 billion when VAT is included. The framework is planned to run initially until September 2030 with extension options taking its maximum life to six years, while its open structure is expected to allow new suppliers to join at planned intervals rather than fixing the supplier list for the full period.

Integrated care boards and general practices are expected to be the main organisations placing contracts through the framework. Multiple suppliers can be appointed across its three lots, giving NHS England a mechanism for preserving choice while applying common requirements to technology used throughout general practice.

Core patient records remain the largest market

Foundation electronic patient record systems account for £649.45 million of the estimated value. The lot covers functions including appointment and consultation management, patient information, prescribing, referrals and the management of practice resources.

Those systems form the operating core of a GP practice, which makes supplier diversification technically difficult despite its commercial appeal. Migrating records or replacing essential workflows introduces risk in an environment where software is used continuously for consultations, prescriptions and referrals.

A second lot worth £135.30 million covers clinical and operational support. The scope includes clinical decision support, digital diagnostics, medicines optimisation, remote patient monitoring, population health management, video consultation, document management and appointment booking across organisations.

That breadth reflects the expansion of primary care technology beyond the patient record itself. GP practices increasingly rely on digital tools connecting them with pharmacies, hospitals, remote-care services and patient-facing channels, creating more points at which information needs to move between products reliably.

Supplier choice therefore depends heavily on interoperability. Bringing more applications into the market creates limited value when practices have to re-enter information manually or lose continuity as work moves between systems, which is why standards and common assurance remain central to the procurement model.

Research becomes part of the framework

The third lot carries an estimated value of £54 million and covers research and development. Suppliers appointed to either of the first two lots are expected to be enrolled automatically unless they opt out, giving NHS England a mechanism for developing and testing new capabilities and standards from discovery through to public beta.

Embedding research into the framework can shorten the distance between policy or standards work and the vendors expected to implement it. Primary care technology evolves while systems remain live, so new interoperability requirements or service models often have to be tested alongside suppliers already supporting operational environments.

The arrangement follows earlier efforts to diversify GP technology, including the Tech Innovation Framework and GP IT Futures. Previous policy has emphasised browser-based systems, cloud delivery and open interfaces as NHS England has tried to reduce the barriers associated with moving between clinical platforms.

An open framework removes one commercial barrier by allowing supplier entry at more than one point during its life. It does not remove the assurance burden faced by new entrants, which still need to satisfy security, clinical safety, interoperability and service requirements before their software can be relied upon in frontline care.

The planned procurement is not yet an invitation to tender. NHS England explicitly describes the current notice as advance information, with detailed service models, delivery requirements and performance expectations due to appear in later tender documentation.

That distinction also means the £838.75 million figure is a framework estimate rather than a guaranteed contract value for any individual supplier. Actual spending will depend on future call-offs by eligible NHS organisations over the life of the arrangement.

Even at planning stage, the structure shows how NHS England intends to organise the next generation of general practice software: a large core market for patient records, a broader layer of clinical and operational applications and a research mechanism that keeps suppliers involved as standards evolve.

The difficult part will be combining that choice with continuity. Thousands of practices depend on these systems every day, so a more open supplier market will succeed only if interoperability and assurance are strong enough to let the NHS change technology without disrupting the care built around it.