NHS England RAVS Integration

In 2024 the National Health Service (NHS) Vaccinations Digital Services (VDS) sub-directorate (under the Digital Prevention Services Programme Directorate) determined that development of an in-house system for the capture and flow of vaccination data would assist NHS England to achieve a number of key objectives:

• Ensure a rapid ability to onboard new vaccine types for data capture and flow without having to undertake the significant effort and cost of engaging multiple 3rd party suppliers to development and assurance processes.
• Achieve savings on the annual national digital health spend of at least £6million, and
• Improve value for money and return on investment for NHSE funding, focussing public health expenditure on NHS England digital development, through the implementation of the Provider Pays Policy.

These requirements align to the Government Missions and Measures parameter for: New delivery in direct response to the new Governmental priorities for health and social care, most specifically as identified under Primary Care Recovery Programme (PCARP) and the NHSE 10-year plan which places emphasis on the delivery of local and community based health services and reduction of spend with 3rd party commercial entities.

In order to realise objectives, set for NHS England in the NHSE 10-Year Plan, NHS-VDS developed the Record A Vaccination System (RAVS). This system was rolled-out within Secondary Care settings through 2024/25 and in 2025 commenced limited roll-out to the Primary Care market supporting wider section 7a vaccination campaigns.

VDS has determined that further roll-out of RAVS to the Primary Care market, most specifically in community pharmacy (CP) settings, is the most robust strategy to achieve:

• Greater engagement of Community Pharmacy (CP) Providers to NHS vaccination campaigns through offering a single sign-on experience, via their existing CP IT systems;
• Greater engagement of CP systems suppliers, through offering integration to RAVS, removing the burden of ongoing seasonal development and assurance requirements.
• Improved digital health spend through reduction in requirement on NHSE to subsidise supplier development and assurance demand and to provide ongoing support and assurance capabilities.

Therefore, VDS seeks to procure CP IT suppliers to integrate RAVS (as the sole and standardised digital vaccination data capture system for CP Providers) into their CP IT systems. This procurement will award contracts for up to ten (10) qualified CP IT suppliers; where such suppliers will be offered a standard remuneration for achievement, by the defined milestone date, of development implementation of the single sign in Integration and full assured readiness to support the Autumn/Winter 2026 COVID/Flu Seasonal Vaccination Campaign.

Subsequent procurement activity is expected to take the form of an Open Procedure in line with requirements identified in Procurement Act 2023. Further information regarding the requirements evaluated as part if this procedure will be shared during the market engagement period.

The market engagement activity will take the form of this Preliminary Market Engagement notice, with suppliers required to express interest via NHS England's Atamis procurement portal - details can be found below.

Additionally, VDS shall hold an information webinar, expected for March 2026 - the specific date for this will be announced via Atamis.

Release of the Invitation to Tender documents is intended for early-April 2026, but is dependent on the market response identified through the market engagement.