Introduction to Capabilities and Standards

What are Capabilities?

The requirements to deliver Digital Services for Integrated Care (DSIC) Solutions are grouped into Capabilities. Each Capability describes the business need at the highest level. For example, ‘Online Patient/Service User Consultation’ describes how Patients/Service Users/Proxies can request and receive support relating to healthcare concerns, at a time and place convenient for them.

Capabilities are used:

• To express the business needs during the procurement

• For the initial assessment of Solutions

• By Suppliers to categorise their products and to see market opportunities

What are Epics and Acceptance Criteria?

Epics are individual high level business requirements and describe features relevant to the Capabilities they belong to. All Epics together define the full scope of a Capability.

The Acceptance Criteria associated with an Epic define the minimum expected functions a Supplier’s Solution must deliver and are test scenarios that will be used during the Capability Assessment stage of Onboarding to establish whether a Supplier’s Solution meets the Epic or not. In order to pass any Epic, all associated Acceptance Criteria for that Epic must pass the assessment.

Epics are classified as either MUST or MAY and all Epics will be assessed during the Capability Assessment stage of Onboarding. It is recommended that Suppliers consider all Epics as part of User Research to understand what the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is for their users.

Each Epic has a unique identifier which allows for the identification of Epics in a consistent manner, e.g. ‘E00001’.

Must Epics

MUST Epics are mandatory and used to confirm during the Capability Assessment stage of Onboarding that a Solution delivers the minimum required for a Capability. A Supplier Solution needs to meet all MUST Epics in order to pass Capability Assessment for a Capability.

May Epics

These Epics are not mandatory, however it is recommended a Supplier considers all MAY Epics. Which MAY Epics a Supplier chooses to implement should be determined by their User Research. All MAY Epics and Acceptance Criteria will be evaluated during the Capability Assessment Stage of On-boarding. Any MAY Epics that are assessed as met will be available to Buyers.

What are Additional Implementation Details?

Additional Implementation Details are mandatory details related to a specific Epic and are assessed during the Assurance stage of Onboarding.

These details can include references to other Standards and Suppliers will need to complete assurance activities related to those Standards.

What is Supporting Information?

This information may be useful to Suppliers when implementing the related Epic, but is not mandatory and is for guidance only.

What are Standards?

Standards describe the technical or operating conditions required to achieve Catalogue Compliance.

Standards are used:

• To express any technical and non-functional requirements

• By Suppliers to understand what is expected of them in order to be compliant

• By Catalogue Authority to assess Supplier Solutions against in order to award compliance

What are Supplementary Care Standards?

A Supplementary Care Standard describes the DSIC representation of the functional, technical and/or operating conditions required to deliver a specific service within a health and care setting, that can:

• Map to services that might be directly commissioned from providers (such as the Community Pharmacy Clinical Services which are part of the Community Pharmacy Commissioning Framework)

• Be discretely identified within a commissioning contract, such as Enhanced Access, Anticipatory Care, Enhanced Health in Care Homes etc., which are all newly specified services within the NHS England Network Contract DES - the Primary Care Network (PCN) contract for GPs

• Be a new controlled service operating within a domain (such as Community Services Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Prescribing) which the Authority is seeking to roll out and make available to users

A Supplementary Care Standard operates within DSIC in the same manner that any other Standard operates under the Agreement in relation to Change Management, the Roadmap, Assurance etc.

What is a Supplementary Care Standard used for?

The purpose of a Supplementary Care Standard is to describe a domain specific service, feature or operating capability to a customer, which they can use to confirm the existence of the service feature or operating capability and its valid operation within a given application.

• It allows us to group requirements that cover multiple Capabilities when there isn’t a Procurement Product

• It’s used to define requirements for a specific service rather than just a Capability or whole Solution, meaning we can focus more on mandatory requirements and assurance ask is potentially smaller

The Supplementary Care Standard is also used for identifying and managing change within the whole service as it can be amended via the Roadmap as services are updated. The Roadmap can also be used to incentivise delivery of the Standard or changes to the Standard via a Roadmap Award.