NHS Supply Chain has begun rolling out a co‑designed, cloud‑hosted online ordering platform built with Deloitte, commercetools and Google Cloud, aiming to speed search and ordering across trusts — but success will hinge on supplier data onboarding, trust adoption and sustained funding.
The NHS is beginning what its procurement lead describes as a “new era” of digital commerce, with NHS Supply Chain rolling out a modern, user‑led online ordering platform that it says will simplify product search, speed ordering and support operational performance across trusts.
According to a feature in Health Business, the platform has been developed in close collaboration with NHS trusts after customers repeatedly reported that too much staff time was spent searching for items, product information was inconsistent, and the existing catalogue experience was slow and difficult to use. NHS Supply Chain says the service currently handles more than eight million orders a year across in excess of 129,000 order points and more than 16,000 locations, consolidating stock from about 1,100 suppliers. The organisation also reports that customers spend more than 33,000 hours a month interacting with its online catalogue, with more than 100,000 individual users in a typical month — a scale that underlines why better digital tooling matters for everyday frontline operations.
NHS Supply Chain frames the programme as part of a wider push to be “easier to work with”. Jodi Chapman, the organisation’s customer, communications and marketing executive director, told Health Business that a modern digital commerce experience is essential to resolve customer pain points and that the platform has been co‑designed with users to ensure their needs are met. The organisation’s website likewise emphasises a co‑design approach, phased delivery and the offer of training and change‑management support as trusts adopt the new system.
Early pilots have already given a flavour of the potential benefits. Pilot trusts report quicker search results, clearer product imagery in baskets and improved mobile access compared with the legacy catalogue, according to the Health Business piece and NHS Supply Chain communications. The platform is intended to support both desktop and mobile use and to integrate with core NHS systems, with an eye to personalisation, clearer communications and smoother order management.
The technical architecture and suppliers behind the rollout are now public. NHS Supply Chain has said Deloitte Digital will deploy a Commerce Hub, using a commercetools front end and Google Cloud hosting. A contract notice reproduced on procurement records shows a five‑year agreement with Deloitte valued at roughly £9 million; that notice details functional requirements such as a services‑based architecture, a business‑rules engine, product data management and taxonomy, and integration with electronic data interchange and third‑party platforms. NHS Supply Chain’s announcement emphasised that commercial decisions and standards for handling NHS data will remain subject to the organisation’s governance.
Industry signals lend weight to the vendor choices. commercetools, the chosen front‑end technology, has been publicly recognised for its composable commerce approach and received a Google Cloud partner award in 2024 — a point the vendor has used to highlight its cloud‑native scalability and suitability for large, mission‑critical deployments. NHS Supply Chain’s communications present the combination of Deloitte, commercetools and Google Cloud as offering the resilience and flexibility the service needs.
Yet the programme arrives against a backdrop of scrutiny and the practical realities of large public‑sector transformation. In a statement responding to a Public Accounts Committee report, NHS Supply Chain acknowledged improvements since March 2023 but said deeper systemic change would require further investment in technology. The organisation has said that necessary investment is included in its business planning for 2024/25, but that delivery remains subject to funding and resource decisions. That caveat points to a familiar public‑sector tension: digital ambition is hard to sustain unless funding, supplier capacity and internal change management are aligned.
There are other operational risks to watch. The scale of NHS Supply Chain’s catalogue and the number of suppliers that must be onboarded mean that data quality, product taxonomy and supplier engagement are critical to realising promised time savings. The contract documentation stresses these exact needs — the platform must improve agility, reduce total cost of ownership and bolster resilience — but achieving them requires sustained effort over the rollout period. NHS Supply Chain says integration with existing ordering systems and compliance with NHS data handling standards are central to its approach and that phased deployment began with a small group of pilot trusts in spring 2024.
For trusts, the proposition is straightforward: faster, clearer search, reliable product information, mobile access and a more personalised ordering experience could free clinical and procurement staff to concentrate on patient care rather than administration. For NHS Supply Chain, success will be judged on whether the new platform measurably reduces the time trusts spend finding and ordering items, improves product information quality, and delivers the operational savings and resilience promised.
The programme’s early indicators are positive, but its ultimate impact will depend on three practical factors: the pace and effectiveness of supplier and data onboarding, the degree to which trusts adopt and use new features (supported by training and change management), and secure, sustainable funding to complete roll‑out and ongoing enhancements. NHS Supply Chain says it is working collaboratively with customers and tech partners to address these issues; independent scrutiny and clear performance metrics will be needed if the initiative is to move from pilot promise to system‑wide improvement.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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