Sid4health is the first key output of the NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme and is one of a series of once-only approaches that the NHS will be adopting to the management of its core procurement data.

Sid4health is a secure web-based platform that provides the NHS with a single source of accurate supplier data. It is an important tool and step forward for the NHS that will significantly improve the NHS' capability to manage its procurement data.

Sid4health has the following features:

• Sid4health enables suppliers to populate, maintain and publish an agreed range of pre-qualification information and make this available on-line to NHS buyers.
• It provides a single source of accurate pre-qualification supplier data that is available to all NHS organisations. 
• NHS buyers can review this information so they can consider those suppliers as potential candidates to be short-listed in their procurements and search for suppliers within categories of products and services. 
• It includes comprehensive search, reporting and export capabilities.
• It is integrated to Dun & Bradstreet systems from which key financial data on suppliers is provided on a daily basis. 
• Suppliers are validated by Dun & Bradstreet protecting the NHS from fraudulent suppliers.
• It provides the NHS with a common data set for pre-qualification. This includes the use of DUNS® numbers to identify suppliers, which is the NHS data standard for suppliers. 
• Sid4health enables the transfer of supplier data and profiles to other procurement eEnablement systems used in the NHS, supporting interoperability between NHS systems. 
• Sid4health has a user group, drawn from the NHS and its supplier community. This group owns the development of sid4health to ensure that the on-going business needs of the NHS and its suppliers are met.

Sid4health allows suppliers to prepare and publish their pre-qualification information once to the NHS. This removes duplication and significantly reduces processing costs for the NHS and its suppliers.

Sid4health provides the NHS with a common data set for pre-qualification; this drives good practice and facilitates the sharing of information between NHS organisations.
Sid4health provides the NHS with access to financial information on suppliers from Dun & Bradstreet from a central database. This has provided the NHS with significant savings and on-line access to the latest information.

An overview of the solution is provided below:

Supplier
Secure access via the Internet enabling suppliers to populate and maintain their own data in a secure environment. Key data sets are populated into supplier profiles from Dun & Bradstreet systems.

Buyer
Secure access via the Internet and the NHS intranet enabling NHS buyers to access select and export supplier information to assist them in their selection of suppliers.

Administration
Sid4health is implemented and managed by the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency on behalf of the NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme. The administration sid4health is undertaken by the Agency via secure access via the Internet enabling the central management, control and support of the facility on behalf of all users.

Policy Context

The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (NHS PASA) is an executive agency of the Department of Health.
www.pasa.nhs.uk 
Sid4health is part of the NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme (NPEP) www.pasa.nhs.uk/PASAWeb/NHSprocurement/NPEP

About NHS PASA
NHS PASA mission statement is work to ensure that the NHS in England makes the most effective use of its resources by having the best possible value for money when purchasing goods and services.

Our key tasks:

• Provide strategic guidance on procurement to the NHS where procurement is taking place at a regional or local level.
• Provide practical guidance, education and training to those involved in procurement throughout the NHS. 
• Promote creativity from suppliers and encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to do business with the NHS. 
• Promote sustainable development within the NHS and its supply chain to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of procurement decisions and increase the positive ones. 
• Encourage the introduction of beneficial, innovative products and technologies into the NHS. 
• Support the national priorities of the NHS.

About the NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme (NPEP)
The NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme is about putting into place a sustainable capability for the NHS to be able to effectively implement and use procurement eEnablement technologies. Achieving this not only involves many stakeholders across the NHS, but the whole of the NHS supply network, including suppliers, service and technology providers.

NPEP provides a range of initiatives and guidance to drive forward the adoption of procurement eEnablement technologies and has the following objectives:

• To establish across the NHS supply network common data and business message standards for procurement. These are the key enablers that are required for the effective implementation of procurement eEnablement technologies across the NHS supply network.
• To establish interoperability between NHS procurement and suppliers across the NHS supply network. 
• To include the adoption of procurement eEnablement technologies in the business objectives of all organisations in the NHS supply network.

Description of target users and groups

Sid4health is used by the following groups of users:

• NHS suppliers who prepare and publish their pre-qualification information once to the NHS and make this information available on-line to NHS buyers
• NHS buyers who review this information so they can consider those suppliers as potential candidates to be short-listed in their procurements and search for suppliers within categories of products and services.

The number of users currently registered on the system is as follows:

• Registered suppliers: 13 999, but in June this will be expanded to 80 000 when a match of suppliers to NHS Hub creditor lists.
• Registered buyers: This is being built in to a report so that we are able to monitor the use of the system and be able to make sure that we grow the use of the system with NHS Organisations. The system will be officially launched to the NHS in July.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

NHS-sid User Group
To assist the procurement, a project team was established to develop the specification of requirements and undertake the evaluation process. Membership of this group was drawn from NHS Trusts, NHS Supply Chain, NHS PASA and suppliers that used the old NHS-sid platform. As integration to Dun and Bradstreet systems is a key requirement of the new sid4health platform, Dun and Bradstreet were also involved in the evaluation process. Other NHS organisations and Trade Associations have also contributed to the development of the specification through a series of workshops.

Development path for sid4health
The specification for sid4health has been developed by representatives from the NHS and suppliers. The first release was completed in May 2009 with subsequent releases delivered as new features are available. A user group for sid4health will be established in July 2009. The membership will be drawn from the NHS and suppliers and will have responsibility to manage the development of sid4health.

Use of sid4health by English NHS organisations will be monitored to ensure effective use of the system is achieved.

As part of the groundwork to include Dun & Bradstreet data, supplier/creditor lists from NHS Hubs were cleansed and matched by Dun & Bradstreet to their DUNS® numbers. These 65 000 suppliers will be uploaded in to sid4health with their associated Dun & Bradstreet data. An agreement was set up between Dun & Bradstreet and NHS PASA on behalf of the NHS in the UK which enabled the extraction of Dun & Bradstreet ratings, scoring against suppliers. This is being built in to the sid4health database.

As part of the development for sid4health, an evaluation procedure will be introduced as a standard format and methodology for use by NHS Organisations in their procurements.

Technology solution

The implementation of sid4health was carried out utilising open source technologies (J2EE) and a Model-View-Controller architectural pattern with multi-tier architectures depicted in the figure below. This approach allows the clear separation of the user interfaces from the business logic and facilitates the overall maintenance and future extensibility of the application. 

The following standards and tools were utilised during the sid4health application development phase: UML language, Java (JDK 6 Update 13) , Tomcat (6.0.18), JSP 2.1/Servlet 2.5, MySQL (5.0.77), iBatis (2.3.4), Apache Commons, Struts (2.1.6), Spring (2.5.6), Log4J (1.2.15), Quartz (1.6.4), XML, XStream (1.3.1), XSLT, Saxon (9.1), FOP (0.95), FCKEditor (2.6.4), AJAX, HTML, CSS, Ant.

Sid4health is implemented following a "provider-independent" approach. The platform is hosted on a pair of HP BL460c 5420 servers, using an active-active fail over configuration. It operates with licence-free database (MySQL), similarly hosted on a pair of HP BL460c L5450 servers. The state-of-the-art hosting facilities are located in a highly secure environment. In order to provide reliable hosting services that meet the SLA requirements, all critical infrastructure has been configured to be fully redundant. The hardware infrastructure is depicted on the diagram below.

Technology choice: Standards-based technology, Mainly (or only) open standards, Open source software

Main results, benefits and impacts

Please refer to other sections of this case.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

As sid4health only went live in May 2009 and its main launch is in July 2009 case studies have yet to be written and shared. Formal case studies will be included in the NHS Procurement eEnablement Programme's case study library. Informal communication has raised interest from across the public sector in the UK.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1: Operational teams need to include all partners
Sid4health changed existing business models and working practices for the NHS, Dun & Bradstreet and for suppliers to the NHS. This has caused several occasions whereas new methods of working have caused some operational issues, such as the allocation of the correct DUNS® numbers to suppliers. Having a joint operational team in place with Dun & Bradstreet, the NHS and European Dynamics has enabled these issues to be resolved effectively and quickly.

Lesson 2: Ownership is essential to effectively identifying requirements
The success of central systems such as sid4health requires them to effectively meet their user requirements. Sid4health has two key groups of stakeholders: NHS organisations and suppliers to the NHS. Identifying requirements of these large groups requires effective engagement with the stakeholders. The establishment of the sid4health user group and involving both the NHS and suppliers in the design and development of the first release of sid4health has enabled a sense of ownership to be developed by both groups, which are now actively involved in designing features for future releases of sid4health.

Lesson 3: Keep some things the same
Sid4health changes the business process of the NHS for pre-qualification significantly. It includes the capability to produce a Dun & Bradstreet report in the same format that the report is produced by Dun & Bradstreet. This step has had to be taken to provide reassurance to certain NHS customers that the data is in fact the same they previously received from Dun & Bradstreet.

Scope: Cross-border, International, Local (city or municipality), National, Pan-European, Regional (sub-national)