EPS onboarding and assurance for IT suppliers

EPS 'onboarding' is the term used for the development and NHS England assurance required before IT suppliers can offer EPS to NHS organisations. EPS onboarding includes the following elements.

Development against EPS pre-requisites - EPS relies on a number of other systems, services and capabilities. IT suppliers must offer, or have integration with, these services to conclude EPS onboarding.

Visit the EPS FHIR API catalogue for the full list of services.

Development against the FHIR API SCAL - EPS integration must be carried out against the newly developed prescribing and dispensing EPS FHIR APIs. Development will be undertaken in line with requirements set out in the FHIR API Supplier Conformance Assessment List (SCAL). The SCAL is a technical document covering information governance, clinical safety, functional testing and EPS requirements.

Documentation - IT suppliers need to create and maintain:

• an up-to-date record of progress against the SCAL 
• a connecting system risk log 
• a hazard log 
• a clinical safety case

NHS England can onboard a limited number of suppliers each year to EPS. There is high demand from IT system suppliers and their customers, particularly in relation to EPS for secondary care use cases, such as hospital outpatients.

The approach to managing IT suppliers through the process is laid out below and is designed to optimise the resources that NHS England has available to support you, whilst also ensuring you have clarity about where you are in the process.

To enter the EPS onboarding process you must first submit an EPS Use Case form.

EPS currently can not support use cases for:

• independent prescribing in community pharmacy (pathfinder programme underway)
• homecare (pilot underway)
• dentistry 
• optometry
• use of private prescriptions
• use of instalment dispensing (FP10MDA)

Requests for these will not be accepted.

The Use Case form asks you to provide details about how and where an EPS product will be used. This information will then be used to consider the application and ensure that it is placed within the appropriate EPS onboarding queue.

Following acceptance of a Use Case request form, NHS England require all parties to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU). The MoU lays out an agreement about ways of working.

Following a successful use case request, you will enter the EPS onboarding process which starts with a queue followed by three tiers.

EPS onboarding queue

Based on the information provided in the Use Case form NHS England will place you into a queue for either:

• EPS rollout into secondary care
• any other supported use case

Access to the EPS SCAL can be provided at this point to enable familiarisation but no support will be available from the NHS England EPS team. Therefore, development work at this stage is carried out at your own risk.

Progression through the queue will be in order of when you submitted the EPS use case form. When capacity becomes available the IT supplier at the top of relevant queue will be offered the opportunity to move into Tier 3.

Tier 3

Tier 3 has been designed to enable NHS England to provide a limited level of support to a greater number of IT suppliers. The NHS England EPS team will provide a monthly meeting where queries can be addressed or taken away for resolution.

You can commence EPS development in Tier 3 with NHS England support, but the principal focus is familiarisation with the EPS SCAL and to make progress against the EPS pre-requisites. This ensures that you are in the best place possible prior to moving into Tier 2.

When capacity becomes available in Tier 2, NHS England will ask all IT suppliers within the same queue to complete a bidding form. This will be assessed by NHS England to conclude which IT supplier is best placed to move into Tier 2 and complete EPS development within six months. The unsuccessful bidder will remain in Tier 3.

Tier 2

In Tier 2 you will receive enhanced NHS England support, which includes a meeting at least every two weeks and an open channel to seek answers to technical queries.

We expect that you will complete EPS development, including the required pre-requisites and the associated documentation, within 6 months.

Following a successful assessment of the product by the NHS England EPS team, you will progress into Tier 1 as soon as capacity becomes available.

Tier 1

Tier 1 is the formal NHS England EPS assurance process which is made up of three stages:

1. Test in Test - Testing your EPS product in a test environment with test data.
2. Test in Live - Testing your EPS product in a live environment with test data.
3. First of Type - A monitored live environment where your EPS product is used with live patients for a period of at least 45 days. 

NHS England will grant full rollout approval following a successful first of type period and a Clinical Authority to Release (CATR) number will be issued which allows you to deploy your EPS product in the marketplace.

This stage is expected to be completed within 6 months.