Decision Support Services

Extension of current provision of interpretation services for the NHS Genomic Medicine Service In November 2018 Genomics England signed a contract with Congenica for the provision of interpretation services to support the soon to be implemented NHS Genomic Medicine Service ("GMS") ("Decision Support Contract") which is due to expire on 31 July 2023. Genomics England has on 31 July 2023 entered into an amendment to the Decision Support Contract under which Congenica will be provide the services for a further period of 16 months with an option to extend for a further 6 months. Genomics England takes the view that Regulation 72 (1) (b) applies to the variation to the Decision Support Contract because additional services from Congenica have become necessary but were not included in the original procurement of this contract but a change of contractor cannot be made at this time due to the bespoke technical specification of the product and it would also cause significant duplication of cost for Genomics England. The value of the variation is under 50% of the value of the Decision Support Contract. NHS England has confirmed that a functioning decision support system for rare disease is essential to the success of the GMS for rare disease and no hiatus in these services is possible. Genomics England has very specific requirements for decision support as any product needs to fit in with its internal National Genomics Informatics System pipeline and no off the shelf product is available or viable without significant development. Given the background to Congenica development, an immediate termination would not only have led to a hiatus in service but would cause substantial inconvenience and duplication of costs should a new decision support provider be brought in. A new procurement will require preparation and proper planning to meet the future objectives of the service yet to be agreed with NHS England. In the event that this were to be considered a new contract award, Genomics England consider that Regulation 32 (2) (b) of the Public Contract Regulations 2015 would apply in any event for the same reasons. There is no other product available in the market to meet the immediate need and requirements and Congenica holds the IP rights to the product. Any supplier would need to substantially develop its standard product to fit Genomics England's needs. This would include customising release cycles to fit the needs of NHS England. Congenica's version of Congenica Rare Disease for Genomics England is a very specific product developed for a single customer. For this reason, there is no genuine competition for the Genomics England version of Congenica Rare Disease on the market today and time will be required for Genomics England to plan its future requirements.