NHS Digital’s Information Representation Service's (IReS) Data Standards Assurance team (DSAS) provides assurance and appraisal services for all Information Standards submitted to the Data Alliance Partnership Board for publication.
The IReS Building Information Standards Business (BIS) Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) encompasses minor or ongoing maintenance to an existing standard, the major revision of an existing standard, or the creation of a new standard.
The IReS Business Development Team facilitates the issue, invitations, and work-packages to registered suppliers for them to quote via the BIS Framework for the provision of goods/services which support all or any of the parts of the life-cycle of information standards:
- research
- design
- development
- assurance
- publication
- adoption
- evaluation
Under this DPS a standard is defined as being one of the following 3 types:
Professional - the record keeping standards applied in the treatment and management of patients and those in receipt of social care.
Semantic - the information models used to code the clinical language used by health and social care professionals so that it can be meaningfully represented in digital systems and transmitted in a way that the receiving professional will understand the clinical concepts and intent of the originating professional, for example SNOMED CT.
Technical - the open standards and best practices employed by digital systems in sharing information about health and social care, for example FHIR.