Credit: Gov.uk under Open Government Licence v3.0

Technology services to support the reporting of Covid-19 tests will stay in place until mid-2024 and could cost more than £62m, according to two contract award notices published by NHS Digital.

It awarded Deloitte a contract titled ‘Digital Test Service Phase 2’ for: “A number of digital journeys used by citizens to book test appointments and report lateral flow device (LFD) test results. It also contains supporting applications for non-digital users via 119."

The contract was awarded and started on 17 June but was only published on 31 August. It has a value of between £27m and £32.4m, running to 16 June 2024.

NHS awarded another contract, titled ‘Digital Test Service Phase 3’, to Accenture on 19 July, which started the day after and was published on 25 August. The work includes running core services such as tracking who took tests, where and when; external data services to allow information to flow in and out of the core system; and a set of applications used by testing sites. This runs until 19 June 2024 and is worth £25m to £30m.

Users reported the results of more than 67m lateral flow tests to the NHS in England in January, but this had fallen to below 3m in August according to the government’s Covid-19 dashboard. On 1 April, the government introduced charges for the tests for most people in England, although they remain free for groups including hospital patients, those at particular risk if they catch Covid-19 and people working in high-risk environments including care homes.