Expert System - Phase 2 (Expression of interest)

Pre-Notification of Requirement - Expert System Phase 2

PLEASE NOTE - THIS PRE- NOTIFICATION OF REQUIREMENTS THAT IS PROVIDED BELOW IS FOR PRELIMINARY REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY AND FOR INTERESTED SUPPLIERS TO EXPRESS INTEREST (EOI) TO A FUTURE OPPORTUNITY, AND MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE PRIOR TO PUBLICATION OF THE FORMAL INVITATION TO TENDER

CQC regulates the quality of care in health and social care in England. As part of our regulation we have an inspection programme covering tens of thousands of NHS and independent hospitals, GPs, dentists, care homes and other health and care providers.

CQC aspires to become a more intelligence driven organisation, and target inspection resources more effectively. As part of its role, CQC rates providers as either Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate. CQC has a regulatory duty to monitor health and social care providers' performance between inspections. Our 2016 to 2021 strategy sets out an ambitious vision: a more targeted, responsive and collaborative approach to regulation so more people get high-quality care.

We are working to become more intelligence driven in our approach and seeking to develop a decision support tool using artificial intelligence that helps our inspectors decide what action to take on receipt of new information about a provider.

We have developed a framework for this tool and are looking to test two aspects of this framework before making a business case for further investment. This proof of concept will focus on the statutory notifications that we receive in adult social care but we expect to be able to extend it to other information sources and sectors in time.

We are seeking bids to develop and test an ontology that makes meaningful connections between notifications received over time, and classifiers that automatically tag notifications against this ontology. Some of these classifiers may need to be based on free text captured as part of the notification.

We expect the bid to include details of a testing phase, for which we will provide a pool of inspectors able to ground truth the output of the combined ontology and automatic classification.

If the concept is successfully demonstrated, then we will develop a business case for extending the system and making it operational. We expect to be able to base an extended system on the ontology and classifiers developed as a part of this project.

The anticipated award of this contract will be January 2019.

If your organisation would like to express an initial interest, please send an e-mail (quoting reference CQC PSO 181) to commercialcontracts@cqc.org.uk . When responding, please confirm your organisation's name, registered office address and contact details

Additional information: It is envisaged CQC will be utilising its E-Tendering Portal for the eventual Tender exercise. Therefore, CQC kindly requests that organisations also register themselves on CQC's E-Tendering Portal via the following weblink: https://cqc-commercial.bravosolution.co.uk.

Should you encounter any difficulties when registering on CQC's E-Tendering Portal, a dedicated helpdesk hosted by Bravo Solutions is available and can be contacted on 0800 368 4850.

Should you experience any difficulties in accessing the documentation on Contracts finder please contact CQC Commercial and contracts team: commercialcontracts@cqc.org.uk