NHS 111 Wales Online Symptom Checkers

This contract is for the supply of an online symptom checker software solution for members of the public to access via the 111 Wales Website. The symptom checkers are required for public use, to aid decision making, provide self-care information and access to urgent unscheduled care.

The symptom checkers provide an alternative service to the 111 Wales telephony service and this contract will enable the symptom checkers to be based on those triage algorithms currently used by non-clinical call handlers within the 111 Wales telephony service.

The symptom checkers will enable a member of the public to answer a series of questions about their symptoms and then provide health information. Depending upon the outcome a person may for example be signposted to contact another service such as a pharmacist. The solution will also enable an end user to enter their demographic details and through integration with other 111 Wales systems enable subsequent remote clinical assessment and call back to be facilitated.

The solution is required to be accessible from the 111 Wales Website however whilst the solution will be interoperable with the 111 Wales Website the 111 Wales Website itself is out of scope of this contract.

This contract is also for the supply of professional services to enable the implementation of the solution as well as the associated licences for the software. The contract also includes the supply of ongoing support and maintenance services.

This contract is for the supply of a new software solution to replace the online symptom checkers currently deployed on the 111 Wales website.

This solution will include a web application providing the public facing front end for the online symptom checker software solution that will be separate to but integrated with the existing 111 Wales website. The 111 Wales online symptom checker software will capture a patient’s symptoms and, through the application of an algorithm, provide more information about those symptoms. The output includes details regarding where to go for help, which care services to potentially contact next, and where to find more information about the symptoms. The online symptom checkers will provide educational content and care-service signposting only and does not offer any form of diagnosis or treatment in relation to the symptoms.

The purpose of the online symptom checkers is to provide an alternative service to the 111 Wales telephony service based on the same solution (“algorithms”) as the non-clinical triage algorithms currently used by call handlers within the 111 Wales telephony service.

The solution is required to assess a range of symptoms and health conditions, using clinically validated algorithms and providing no less than the 76-symptom checkers currently available online via the 111 Wales Website. The solution must also provide triage outcome levels that are the equivalent as the 111 Wales telephony service.

The online symptom checkers are required to provide clear and easily understood health information that can contain links to other 111 Wales Website pages to provide the end user with additional information where required. The solution is also required to have the ability for an end user to input demographic information at the start of self-triage to provide tailored triage flow and results. In addition, the solution is required to enable demographic information to be transferred to other call handling and triage systems to allow subsequent remote clinical assessment from the 111 Wales telephony service and other local health and wellbeing services across Wales to be able to facilitate a call back if needed.

The software solution will be hosted locally within the Trust’s datacentres using existing infrastructure already in-place that is currently used to deploy other 111 Wales systems.

In addition, this contract is for the supply of professional services to enable the implementation of the solution as well as the relevant software licences for the software itself. The contract is also for the supply of the associated ongoing support and maintenance services.