Building the Digital Foundation for Health Discovery: Posterity Global & Our Future Health

 

Date: 2021-2022  

 

Our Future Health was established as the UK’s most ambitious health research programme, uniting millions of people to drive advancements in preventing, detecting, and treating diseases. Backed by £79 million in funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a government body investing in science and research, Our Future Health was a "greenfield" organisation with no existing commercial or procurement team. Faced with the urgent need to establish critical Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) services and capabilities to underpin its ambitious core programme, Our Future Health needed expert support.

 

Recognising the critical need for immediate commercial and procurement expertise, Our Future Health commissioned Posterity Global in April 2021 to act as their outsourced commercial function. Posterity Global was tasked with providing comprehensive advice, guidance, and operational delivery support, with a particular focus on establishing essential DDaT services and capabilities.

 

Posterity Global's engagement focused on two key initial priorities:

 

Pilot Digital Platform: Posterity Global advised on and supported the commissioning of a DDaT partner to develop the pilot platform.

 

This involved:

• Technical development to test the core programme's feasibility, including implementing and supporting a minimum viable product (MVP) service to recruit an initial population of approximately 3,000 - 5,000 volunteers.
• Evaluating approaches to capturing and securely storing volunteer health information and data, including clinical samples.
• Engaging and retaining volunteers, and assessing the recruitment approach's effectiveness in achieving cohort diversity.
• Migrating the pilot platform to public cloud infrastructure.
• Providing ongoing platform support.

 

Cyber Security Services: Posterity Global advised on and supported the commissioning of a DDaT partner to:

• Conduct a baseline review of existing systems, cloud architecture, processes, commitments, and plans.
• Assist with planning and executing tasks to achieve compliance with Cyber Essentials Plus and the NHS Data Security Protection Toolkit.
• Provide National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) certified services, such as penetration testing (‘CHECK’) and cyber incident response (‘CIR’), to ensure robust and resilient systems, processes, and operating procedures.

 

During Our Future Health's crucial initial start-up phase, Posterity Global provided essential commercial and procurement support across these foundational areas, which were critical for building trust and enabling future scale.

 

Recognising the inherent complexities of Our Future Health's ambitious core programme and the potential challenges in structuring effective procurements, Posterity Global proactively advised on and facilitated extensive early market engagement. This strategic approach, involving both open and closed sessions, allowed for the iterative development and refinement of outcome-based requirements, ensuring optimal project outcomes, value for money, and fostering potential for collaborative delivery among future suppliers.

 

We worked closely with Our Future Health’s Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Director of Epidemiology, DDaT teams and external legal advisors, to:

• Assist with developing their outcome-based requirements and evaluation criteria, ensuring relevance and proportionality.
• Analyse and recommend commercial routes to the DDaT market available from Crown Commercial Service (CCS) and the NHS Shared Business Services.
• Recommend Public Contracts Regulations 2015 compliant approaches.
• Carry out an extensive phase of virtual early market engagement sessions, both open and closed / bilateral sessions, using extensive blogging to increase reach and transparency.
• Run requests for proposals, and above threshold procurements via the CCS ‘Find a Tender Service’.
• Chair moderation sessions.
• Evaluate pricing submissions.
• Prepare contracts.
• Develop award recommendations, including Regulation 84(1) reports and Our Future Health’s Audit and Risk Committee reports.
• Draft standstill letters for unsuccessful bidders and provide feedback in line with Regulation 55.
• Mobilise for contract commencement.

 

A central pillar of Posterity Global's support for Our Future Health's core programme involved a strategically critical, above-threshold procurement encompassing three interconnected lots:

• Secure and scalable public cloud infrastructure (lot 1).
• A Trusted Research Environment (TRE) platform to enable registered and approved researchers from across the world to access and use data within a secure environment (lot 2).
• Management of the billing of cloud compute and storage costs for researchers using the TRE (lot 3).

 

The contract award for this strategic procurement is covered in the Our Future Health blog post called ‘Procurement awards for cloud infrastructure and trusted research environment’ (September 2022) which said “The contracts have been awarded following a comprehensive procurement process supported by Posterity Global, with bids from many suppliers.”

 

Beyond the core procurement, Posterity Global supported Our Future Health on other commercial and procurement activities:

• TRE accreditation assessment procurement.
• Cognition survey tool:

• Early market engagement, pre-event.
• Early market engagement, post-event.

 

Value & Impact

 

Posterity Global's strategic procurement delivery for Our Future Health's core programme, encompassing public cloud infrastructure, the TRE platform, and researcher billing, yielded significant financial benefits. The 3-year contracts awarded by Our Future Health had a total value of £2 million. Posterity Global delivered an average saving of £5.33 million over the initial 3-year term of the contracts with Microsoft (lot 1) and DNAnexus (lots 2 and 3).

 

This average saving is comprised of:

• A minimum saving of £3 million, based on Our Future Health’s minimum estimation of anticipated costs of £5 million over 3 years.
• A maximum saving of £7.65 million, based on Our Future Health’s maximum estimation of anticipated costs of £9.65 million over 3 years.

 

Our contract with Our Future Health concluded in September 2022. The subsequent ramp-up of their core programme has been covered in the national media, for example:

• ‘Health of nation study calls on millions to sign up’ (BBC, October 2022).
• ‘Millions invited to take part in UK scheme to diagnose diseases earlier’ (Guardian, October 2022).

 

Microsoft’s success through this procurement has been covered in their blog titled ‘UK’s largest health research programme is aiming to transform the prevention, detection and treatment of some of the most common diseases – and the Microsoft Cloud will help’.

 

DNAnexus’ success through this procurement has been covered on the Business Wire website in a blog post named ‘DNAnexus Selected as Platform Provider of the Trusted Research Environment for UK’s Largest Health Research Program’.

 

 

Let’s Build Better Procurement, Together

 

At Posterity Global, we work with public sector leaders who want procurement to be strategic, future-ready, and drive social value for money.

 

To hear more about our insights and how we could help you deliver, please get in touch

hello@posterity.global