Berkshire Healthcare Trust Seeks Suppliers for Automated Triage of Musculoskeletal Referrals
Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has asked suppliers to come forward to discuss a digital clinical triage service for musculoskeletal conditions. The tool would assess patients and direct them to the relevant service without human intervention. The trust set out the request in notice 096023-2026 on the Find a Tender service. Suppliers have until 12:00pm on 2 November 2026 to submit expressions of interest.
The exercise is a soft market engagement, a preliminary stage that sits ahead of any formal tender. The trust says responses will improve its understanding of the supplier market and help it refine its requirements. They will also inform how any later procurement project is structured. No contract has been awarded, and the notice does not commit the trust to buying a product.
The service would support four areas of the trust's work: community physiotherapy, specialist physiotherapy, the integrated pain and spinal service, and MSK podiatry. Each addresses a different level of clinical need. Patients with a straightforward joint complaint may suit community physiotherapy. Those with persistent pain or spinal symptoms may need a different pathway. Sorting referrals accurately across these services is the central task the trust wants a supplier to automate.
The notice sets out how referrals would reach the tool. It would need to accept referrals from primary care, community services and secondary care through the NHS electronic referral service. Patients would also be able to refer themselves through an online portal that the trust is currently developing. The solution would therefore sit between several referral sources and a single set of onward services.
The trust assumes the solution will probably need to be registered as a medical device. In the UK, software intended to inform clinical decisions can fall within medical device regulation, which is overseen by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Registration places obligations on a manufacturer, including evidence that the product performs safely for its stated purpose. The notice describes the level of automated clinical expertise needed as significant, given that the tool must tell general MSK physiotherapy apart from specialist MSK services and from chronic pain and spinal services during assessment. The trust gives no detail in the notice about how such expertise should be demonstrated, and that is likely to be among the points it hopes to clarify through the engagement.
The trust also asks that the solution, where possible, be available in English, Polish, Punjabi, Nepali and Urdu. Language support affects who can complete a self-referral without assistance, which makes the requirement relevant to access as well as to convenience.
The notice says any downstream procurement would apply multiple award criteria covering technical merit, quality, social value and price. It states that taking part in the soft market engagement will not prevent a supplier from entering a later competition, and that staying out will not do so either. The trust adds that no information supplied during the process is intended to give any supplier an advantage in a future procurement.
Suppliers wishing to take part have until noon on 2 November 2026 to register their interest. The responses will shape the specification the trust eventually issues, if it decides to proceed to a full procurement.
