Extra £367k added to deal in support of isolation payments 

Credit: Peter Byrne/PA Wire/PA Images

The government has spent an extra £366,720 on cloud support for the NHS Test and Trace scheme to improve the flow of data throughout the scheme.

The six-month deal, which came into effect at the start of September, was awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care to BJSS. The Leeds-headquartered IT and digital services specialist was asked “consolidate the hosting of the business services [for the Test and Trace programme] onto a single multi-cloud, multi-tenanted cloud platform”.
 
According to the original contract, the firm was also contracted to “provide programme collaboration, development, test and operational management tooling as part of the platform”.

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Newly published procurement documents reveal that the deal was expanded to cover additional services and resources for a 12-week period beginning on 23 November. The extra functionality takes the value of the contract to almost £5.7m.

“There are a number of integration points within the current architecture that need support from an integration team,” the DHSC said.

This includes integrating data derived from the Covid-19 testing kits supplied by US science equipment company Thermo Fisher into the systems for the National Pathology Exchange – a tech infrastructure connecting NHS labs across the country.

This additional integration work was needed “to enable results to flow quickly from the new labs into the results-processing service”.

Also required as part of the contract’s expansion is “integration between the results service and the certification apps to enable… results information to flow to the app to enable isolation payments claims by the recipient”.

This additional functionality should also tie into the “back-end database” of the Test and Trace programme, according to the DHSC.

Other than the new services and expanded value, there are no other “changes to the original terms and conditions”, the department said. The deal was due to expire on 31 March.