The NHS is entering a new era of procurement with the launch of a modern, user-led digital commerce platform. Designed in collaboration with NHS trusts, the new system from NHS Supply Chain streamlines product search and ordering, improves usability, and supports better operational performance across the health service
NHS Supply Chain manages the sourcing, delivery, and supply of healthcare products, services, and food for NHS trusts and healthcare organisations across England and Wales, processing more than 8 million orders per year, across over 129,000 order points, over 16,000 locations and consolidating orders from over 1,100 suppliers.
NHS Supply Chain customers spend over 33,000 hours a month using our online catalogue and ordering system, with over 100,000 individual users during that same period.
Customer feedback is very important to us and common themes included too much time being spent searching for and ordering products, with customers finding it hard to see what they are looking for, and quality of information being poor.
As part of our vision to be easier to work with, we have been working on a digital commerce programme to provide a new digital platform and interface, including our online catalogue, to make it easier for customers to search and order products on technology that’s scalable and flexible to adapt to evolving NHS needs.
Jodi Chapman, customer, communications and marketing executive director, NHS Supply Chain said: “We recognise that a modern digital commerce experience is essential to resolve customer pain points and to ensure our service aligns to their expectations. We are working collaboratively with customers, internal teams and our tech partners to co-design the new platform, ensuring the needs of all users are considered. We want to be easy to work with across all NHS care settings.”
Digital Commerce Programme
The new digital commerce platform aims to make it easier for customers to search for and order products, improving overall operational performance and effectiveness.
We’ve been working with a group of pilot trusts, delivering the platform and catalogue in incremental phases, getting the foundations and the basics right from the beginning and then, building on these improvements, have been introducing more features.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust have been instrumental in helping build the new platform as one of the first pilot trusts onboard since the launch of the Digital Commerce programme, feeding back each month as new features have been developed and deployed.
The trust will roll out the new and improved NHS Supply Chain catalogue to its Scan4Safety team, remarking on the much-improved search function.
Andrew Jackson, head of supply chain at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust said: “I use the search function all the time because it is so much quicker, so I’m really keen to get other users onto the platform and using it.”
Emma Lowry, head of digital commerce, NHS Supply Chain said: “This is a great step forward, as we watch the data in the back end of the platform, we can learn from user journeys and understand the performance as we build up traffic.
“Other pilot trusts including, Barts Health, Nottingham University Hospitals, South Tees Hospitals and University Hospitals Sussex have also been adding more users to their platform. This shows the value of co-designing with our customers enabling them to expand access when they feel confident in the platform.”
Pilot users have been keen to share how the updates have made the ordering process easier.
Helen Sleeper, materials management team leader, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “I can see what’s in my basket at a glance, as it now includes images, which really speeds up the process”.
Sam Davison, clinical procurement lead nurse, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “If I get called away from my desk halfway through placing an order, and my session times out, I can log back in again and my basket is still full.”
When on a visit, Bilal Ahmad, materials management team leader, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “The team use the mobile version a lot to look up products” recognising improvements to the platform making it easier to use when on the move, supporting the team and giving them flexibility when working across different sites.
Coming up
There are many more developments coming up this year, and some great new features have been added to the platform recently, including: effective purchase controls, replacing masking; and product pricing, both including and excluding VAT.
As of June 2025, over 30 trusts across England and Wales have access to the new platform.
As we work on our activation plan to give access to the new catalogue to all trusts, we invite any trusts interested in joining the initial tranche to get early access to the platform.
If you are interested, please contact the Digital Commerce team at digital.commerce@supplychain.nhs.uk and copy in your NHS Supply Chain ICS Manager.
