Key Summary
- The £215-million five-year partnership will cover all the seven national adult screening programmes.
- The services will be sovereign and NHS-owned: built in the UK and controlled by the NHS.
- Netcompany will run and enhance the digital services behind the existing screening pathways.
NHS England has selected Copenhagen-based Netcompany as the digital delivery partner for its adult screening programmes, to improve early diagnosis and timely treatment.
The £215-million five-year partnership begins in September and covers all seven national adult screening programmes, including breast, cervical and bowel cancers, covering around 15 million invitations a year.
The services will be sovereign and NHS-owned: built in the UK and controlled by the NHS.
The appointment of Netcompany forms a central part of the NHS Digital Prevention Services Programme (DPSP) and the government’s ambition to shift the health service from treatment to prevention.
Thousands of lives in England are saved every year through screening, and this partnership aims to spot more diseases at early stages.
This will shorten the time between an invitation and a result, and make it easier for people to take part.
Netcompany will run and enhance the digital services behind the existing screening pathways.
This includes a new national breast screening service and an enhanced cervical screening service that invites people digitally and offers them an HPV self-testing kit at home.
The future screenings will be more personal and focus on increasing screenings among the historically under-served communities.
UK partners
Netcompany will deliver using an ecosystem of UK partners and a commitment from them of at least 33% of contract revenue to small and medium-sized businesses.
The partners include dxw, Create Change and Adroc, with Softwire as a scaling partner.
A dedicated Screening Innovation Fund will back SME-led proofs of concept, including new entrants to public sector work, with a target of one in five supply chain businesses led by underrepresented groups.
This will build a diverse UK supplier base rather than concentrating it in a single provider.
Netcompany's UK Country Managing Partner Richard Davies said: “Screening saves lives, and this is one of the most important and ambitious digital programmes anywhere in government. We are proud to have been chosen to help deliver it.
"Replacing national systems at this scale while keeping screening running without interruption is a serious engineering challenge, and it is the work we do best. We will build modern, secure, data-driven platforms that allows the NHS to target screening with a precision that legacy systems were never designed to deliver – and by directing meaningful investment into UK SMEs, we aim to leave behind a stronger and more resilient digital health supply chain.”
