NHS e-Procurement Strategy: GDSN and PEPPOL compliance

Medical devices suppliers: Adoption calendar is almost finished, next steps being the sending of invoices that carry GS1, GTIN and GLN data to NHS PEPPOL Access Points.
Medicine suppliers: Next deadline is September 30, 2019. Packaging label for all orderable units above patient pack level to carry aGS1 data carrier.
Purchase to pay process: Next deadline is September 30, 2019. Receive orders from NHS PEPPOL Access Points including, where available, GS1 GTIN and GLN data.

All hospitals, health centers and trusts belonging to the National Health Service. All suppliers and manufacturers providing the National Health Service with goods and services.

Electronic ordering or e-procurement is the managing of relations with suppliers and purchase of goods and services through the use of electronic data transfer systems. The widespread use of this type of technology, known as EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), lets you automate the exchanging of business and logistic documents between partners throughout the supply chain, improving the distribution of goods and cutting costs.

A provider approved by the PEPPOL organization to supply connectivity services through its communication infrastructure.

Access Point providers typically connect to their customers through their existing networks and use the PEPPOL Access Point to exchange documents with other access point providers. So, the PEPPOL Transport Infrastructure can be considered as providing a ‘gateway’ o ‘bridge’ between specific e-procurement communities or service platforms. We call this federated network of access points connected to each other using a common set of standards the PEPPOL community.

The NHS e-procurement system uses this PEPPOL Network to set up a point-to- point connection with the EDI solutions of the partners, and it is necessary to use communication services that only an accredited Access Point can provide.

It is not a mandatory requirement to start up your NHS e-procurement solution and connect with your partners in the NHS supply chain, whether public or private. Nevertheless, it is highly recommendable due to the technological challenge involved in approaching all the project component phases with assurances.

Implementing a solution aligned with the needs of the NHS e-procurement platform requires a high capacity and technological expertise in different EDI standards and communication protocols.

This aspect, along with the need for different official certificates to operate in network such as GDSN (Global Data Synchronization Network) or PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online), greatly complicates the options for developing a 100% operational platform internally for NHS trusts, hospitals and health centers alike.

The health sector encompasses a large number of international companies accustomed to EDI in their normal business relations. It may be the case that you already have an EDI solution for the transfer of B2B data with your partners. In this sense, you already have part of the work done, especially if you work with an EDI integrated solution that connects your internal management system with the solution. However, the NHS e-procurement initiative calls for the use of specific messaging and communication protocols.

To this end, you will need to prepare your internal system to generate the new XML messages and forward them to the recipient partner through the PEPPOL network. Connectivity, for which will need to hire the services of an accredited provider or NHS Access Point.

Additionally, although you have an electronic data interchange solution, you will still need to cover the product data synchronization side through the GDSN network. At this point, you must be able to generate the product files with the fields and structure defined by GS1 and register all this information in a NHS GDSN-certified data pool.

Summing up, you may partially develop the solution, preparing your systems to integrate the messages, but you will always need at least the services of a certified partner to be able to connect with your trading partner through the networks set up in the project.