NHSX is a government body belonging to UK health services, whose functions address issues such as health technology and digital transformation in the health sector.
NHSX released a preview of the Digital Technology Assessment Criterion (DTAC) to understand the parameters and criteria for how assessments will be conducted on digital health technologies.
In addition, NHS AI Lab, the body dedicated to artificial intelligence research in the UK's national health services, has created a good practice guide for digital health technologies near-implementation.
In this way, the beta version of DTAC replaces the digital assessment questionnaire and the NHS digital assessment portal. The best practice guide and DTAC will be used to articulate the digital services plan, offering key principles such as security and privacy, interoperability, clinical security, accessibility and inclusion.
DTAC will provide a foundation for digital technologies specializing in health care, enabling patients, health professionals and the system at large to adapt appropriate and innovative technologies to medical practice.
The evaluation criteria consist of five main areas:
- Clinical safety: assessed to ensure that baseline clinical safety measures are in place and that organisations undertake clinical risk management activities to manage this risk
- Data protection: assessed to ensure that data protection and privacy is ‘by design’ and the rights of individuals are protected.
- Technical assurance: assessed to ensure that products are secure and stable
- Interoperability: assessed to ensure that data is communicated accurately and quickly whilst staying safe and secure
- Usability and accessibility: products are allocated a conformity rating having been benchmarked against good practice. Where there are areas for improvement, recommendations will be made if there are areas for improvement.
The beta phase will last approximately three months, so NHSX will continue to work with different sectors to evaluate digital technology and ensure that the criteria are updated in constantly.
