Market Engagement – NHS National Discovery Service Architecture (Knowledge and Library Services)

This pre-procurement exercise is being run to engage suppliers capable of delivering all or some elements of the National Discovery Service for the NHS in England. This must include:

• A discovery layer to seamlessly connect health and care staff and learners to trusted, high-quality knowledge and evidence resources in one place, using a single search.
• Holdings management that can manage collections of content bought both nationally and locally.
• Link enhancement that provides end-users with direct access to the full text of digital holdings from multiple platforms and enables library-to-library sharing of resources under the terms of the NHS Copyright Licence Plus.

Additional information

• The contract(s) will be for the supply of hosted services as described above
• We estimate the contract(s) to start on 1 April 2027 and that it/they will run for 3 years with optional extensions. This may be subject to change based on organisational priorities
• Suppliers will be required to collaborate to produce an effective, integrated user experience
• Systems must integrate effectively with other services in the ecosystem such as NHS OpenAthens, regional Koha library management systems, research repositories and content from diverse suppliers
• If a transition period is required between current and new suppliers then this will be accommodated within the agreed contract period
• A description of the high-level requirements can be found in the associated RFI document
• The value referenced below covers all three requirements for the initial contract period plus extensions