A £27.8 million three-year contract for a ‘digital front door’ for patients in Scotland to access their online health and social care records has been awarded to BJSS.
NHS Education for Scotland, the national health board for education, training and workforce development, appointed the tech consultancy, owned by Canadian IT services giant CGI, after it won the bid against six rival suppliers.
Scottish Government Ministers announced the policy to develop a health and social care app in the programme for government earlier this month, with an initial launch costed at £12 million for the 2025/2026 financial year. That would mean the remaining £15.8 million is expected to be spent in the two subsequent financial years.
In a contract notice published yesterday on the Public Contracts Scotland website, for an award of £27.852 million, it stated the total contract value ‘represents the maximum projected expenditure, assuming all contract extensions are utilised and the demand for resources is fully met’.
The award notice said: “The delivery partner will work alongside NHS Education for Scotland in delivering the “Key Priority Deliverables” described in this document for December 2025.
“The delivery partner’s resources will work collaboratively as an integrated part of the Technology Service within NHS Education for Scotland using established programme management and technology delivery methodologies. This will include, for example, participation in standard project and programme management and delivery structures, such as daily stand-up meetings, planning meetings, programme boards. Activities such as concise highlight reporting, developing architectural documentation, service blueprints, organising and participating in engagement, design and delivery meetings with stakeholders as appropriate will be required.”
There is no information about the length of the contract in the notice, but NHS Education for Scotland confirmed three years following a request for clarification from Futurescot. It is understood that bidders had been informed that the annual budget figure was expected to be approximately £3 to £4 million-a-year. “£27 million is a lot more than the expectation was,” a source said. “Either they are trying to increase the scope of the contract, beyond what was tendered for, or they’re expecting it to be very expensive.”
“And you could argue that it’s a lot of money to be spent on something that’s already been built somewhere else,” the source added.
The news comes four months after BJSS, which has a base in Glasgow, and a Leeds head office, was appointed in January as the principal contractor for the NHS App for England, in a two-year contract worth an expected £37.5 million. IBM is also under contract for its role in delivering the app, for which it was awarded a revised figure of £78.6 million to cover development work between 2022 and July 2026.
For the NHS App in England, a contract award notice was published on 22 January 2025, stating that BJSS will deliver “large-scale public facing digital services” and help develop the app and NHS.uk. In Wales, £14 million was spent developing a similar system.
According to the NHS in England, the system had 33.6 million users as of December 2023, with three quarters of the adult population signed up to use it. The app allows people to view their GP health records, order repeat prescriptions, or nominate their preferred pharmacy. Patients can also view and manage their hospital appointments on the app, and many GP practices are now sending notifications to patients with appointment reminders and other messages relating to their care.
Political website Guido Fawkes claimed that the Welsh Government’s equivalent system, based on cost per user, worked out 62 times more expensive than England’s, albeit using the development costs under a previous contract where the figure was £62.8 million, and with a significantly lower number of users, at 130,730. The £62.8 million figure emerged in a parliamentary question, covering NHS App development costs between 2019 and 2023.
Of note is that the Welsh version of the NHS App, developed by Kainos, took two years to be designed, tested and delivered, from conception in 2021 to initial release in 2023. The Scottish Government has committed to a commencement of a national rollout from December this year, with NHS Lanarkshire as a testbed region, and then a phased release across Scotland’s 13 other territorial health boards.
In the programme for government, released on May 6, Scottish ministers said: “Launching the initial version of the health and social care app by the end of the year, with investment of £12 million and a published national roll-out programme setting out when the app will be made available progressively across Scotland as well as the longer-term plans for the wider ‘personalised digital health and social care service’.”
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP said: “These soaring costs are a prime example of the SNP’s gross mismanagement of Scotland’s NHS.
“This app is already years behind schedule, yet the SNP are typically failing to get a grip on the costs involved in a significant project. Serious questions must be answered as to why costs have spiralled in such a short space of time.
“This is money that could have been spent on frontline healthcare and supporting dedicated staff who have been neglected by successive SNP health secretaries. Neil Gray must urgently confirm when patients will have access to this app and ensure it will be delivered at best value to taxpayers.”
Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “Providing this new app as part of our digital front door service will make it easier for people to manage their appointments in a more flexible manner, reduce the need to re-tell their story as well as find and follow information that supports them to stay well at home and in their community.
“Over time, we believe this can help us drive down waiting times, reduce missed appointments and help service users understand where they are in the referral process.”
An NHS Education for Scotland spokesperson said: “NHS Education for Scotland (NES) recently awarded BJSS a contract to serve as the delivery partner for a new Digital Front Door, which will improve how people in Scotland interact with health and social care services. The total contract value awarded to BJSS represents the maximum projected expenditure, assuming all contract extensions are utilised and the demand for resources is fully met over a period of three years. As noted in this year’s Programme for Government, funding for the “initial launch” of the Digital Front Door for the Financial Year 25/26 was costed at £12million.”
The spokesperson added: “NES continues to work closely with NHS England on development of the Digital Front Door in Scotland. Whilst Scotland’s systems architecture is significantly different from England’s, we are learning from their development of digital health and care services and adapting technologies where possible. BJSS has significant experience with the NHS App, enhancing its integration and services in England. This expertise will be applied to developing Scotland’s Digital Front Door.”
