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Stage 4: test and assurance

Functional and integration testing to complete development of a conformant SMS Client along with completion of the Supplier Conformance Assessment List (Technical Conformance approval)

SMS client assurance overview

As the NHS Digital compliance process describes,  if a supplier does not already have a conformant product (SMS Client), technical conformance approval must be obtained by providing technical information and test evidence. If the client is to be deployed, the End User must also approve and accept the developed client.

The completion of the technical conformance approval process requires the Supplier to provide evidence of the developed SMS client in line with the web service interface requirements, generic interoperability (ITK) requirements and the specific SMS client requirements.

Full technical conformance approval is achieved by completing the assurance steps, resulting in the SMS Client being awarded a status of ‘technically conformant’ and an ITK conformance certificate being issued:

  • functional testing
  • Supplier Conformance Assessment List (completed by supplier and reviewed by NHS Digital)
  • ITK Certification requirements (including completion of the supplier certified requirements spreadsheet by the supplier). 

The certificate issued is for the specific version of the product tested and is only applicable for that version. Any changes or upgrades to the conformant product will require resubmission as per the ITK Conformance process.  A separate certificate will be issued for each version.

When the certificate is issued, the Supplier will be asked to provide details for the NHS Digital web hosted ITK conformance catalogue which is a list of conformant products, with links to the company websites of the Supplier of those products.

Once the ITK conformance certificate has been granted, the Supplier will be asked to seek end user approval of the developed Client and readiness to accept the service.  This then leads to NHS Digital issuing the relevant agreements to the supplier and end user organisation.

Further information

  1. internal

    Stage 3: Development

    Information and resources for developers who are starting to build the SMS client.

  4. internal

    SMS test data (test pack)

    A link to the main testing tool and downloadable data for developers to use during testing.

  5. internal

    Stage 5: agreements

    Summaries of the documents that detail the responsibilities, obligations and rights of the participant organisations

Last edited: 19 July 2019 12:24 pm