Facilitating compliance and streamlining the adoption of health tech in the NHS
Facilitating compliance and streamlining the adoption of health tech in the NHS
8foldGovernance has unveiled the UK’s first ‘DTAC Portal’, designed to facilitate compliance and streamline the adoption of health technology in the NHS and social care
The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria or ‘DTAC’ is the regulatory standard introduced by NHS England to ensure that all health and med tech products and services used within the NHS and social care conform to the highest standards of quality and safety.
For NHS health and social care organisations, the DTAC is used to assess different suppliers during the procurement process, or as part of due diligence to ensure they take a rigorous approach to information governance, clinical safety, data protection, technical and cyber security. The criteria is designed to bring together legislation and good practice to pave a safe and seamless path between development and procurement.
As a live process that incorporates several moving parts, it can be challenging for digital health technology suppliers to share evidence of their DTAC compliance with procuring organisations, causing delays in the implementation and adoption of new health technologies.
With no formal mechanism for presenting and sharing the extensive evidence needed to demonstrate compliance against the baseline criteria, DTAC submissions rely on file sharing and email exchange, making it difficult to effectively manage live documents, track changes and monitor real-time compliance. This is time consuming, risks information being missed, out-of-date information being used, and ultimately, slows the adoption of new, innovative health tech in the NHS. However, since launching the UK’s first DTAC Portal, 8foldGovernance has resolved these challenges and revolutionised the way NHS suppliers can share their DTAC compliance status with the NHS.
The ‘8fold DTAC Portal’ is a live system, fully-populated by a team of specialised clinical safety, information security and data protection professionals to ensure health tech suppliers can:
Former NHS clinician, now founder and CEO of 8foldGovernance, Lyndon Johnson, said: “Our vision is for, “Transformative health technologies to reach everyone who needs them“.
While the DTAC is central to this, progress has sometimes been stifled by inefficient processes for sharing vital information. This is frustrating for everyone involved in the assurance process because it relies on information being drip-fed through large files and emails that often get lost in the system, can’t cope with the size of the attachments, or aspects of the information are missing altogether. The 8fold DTAC Portal changes all of that. It streamlines adoption by ensuring that all the necessary information is evidenced in a secure, real-time DTAC Portal, supplemented with an accessible and user-friendly dashboard.”
NHS health tech supplier – KiActiv®, is a digital behaviour change service that remotely supports patients to build physical activity into their everyday routines in a sustainable way, helping to manage and reduce the risk of long-term health conditions.
When KiActiv® approached 8foldGovernance, they were seeking support to demonstrate their DTAC compliance, namely in respect of clinical risk management. As well as being assured by a team of registered clinical risk and compliance specialists, the 8fold DTAC Portal allowed KiActiv® to easily share their full DTAC documentation and supporting evidence with their NHS clients, including the information governance team responsible for monitoring compliance. This made the process of signing up new customers more seamless, says Tommy. “Since using the DTAC Portal, NHS Information Governance teams typically find it much easier to review and accept the information, making sign-off quicker and more seamless.”
Prior to using the 8fold DTAC Portal, DTAC submissions would become a long and laborious task for many health tech suppliers. Tommy adds: “Once we ticked everything off, it also enabled us to have more structured conversations with the 8fold team about how to operationalise changes in future and demonstrate our compliance more widely. That was useful to help tie everything up in a neat package, to share and sit behind as something we knew we could rely on.”
The global healthtech sector has seen rapid transformation in recent years, with the United Kingdom and United States alone, seeing a 280% increase in funding, accounting for over $51.3billion in 2021. Startups in particular have attracted major investment, driving forward innovation in the UK’s healthcare industry, including the NHS where Covid-19 and the use of early adopter and pilot sites has accelerated demand.
Yet, in most parts, the adoption of new health tech remains slow which can be frustrating for procuring NHS organisations, health tech suppliers and the patients who miss out on the benefits that health tech presents. 8foldGovernance aims to support health suppliers through compliance to procurement, helping to bring the benefits of health tech to the people who need them.
Let’s see how we can help you navigate DTAC or any other aspect of information governance, data protection or clinical safety.
Let’s see how we can help you navigate DTAC or any other aspect of information governance, data protection or clinical safety.
