Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) has launched a new Ambient Voice Technology Solutions Open Framework for NHS Wales and General Medical Services providers.
The framework is worth an estimated £10 million excluding VAT / £12 million including VAT and is designed to support technologies that capture clinical conversations and convert them into structured documentation with minimal user intervention.
The tender is open now, with submissions due on 16 September 2026. If you're considering bidding for the NHS Wales AVT framework, contact Thornton & Lowe for practical support with your response.
What does the ambient voice technology framework cover?
The scope includes technology capable of supporting clinical documentation and workflows through functions such as:
- ambient voice capture;
- real-time speech-to-text transcription;
- generative AI summarisation;
- suggested structured clinical coding;
- intelligent summarisation;
- automated template population;
- review and approval workflows;
- integration with GP systems, currently including EMIS Web; and
- insights and reporting.
For NHS Wales, the aim is to use AVT to improve documentation workflows and allow clinicians to focus more closely on patient interaction.
This sits at the intersection of digital and healthcare procurement. Suppliers may find our guides to IT, digital and technology tenders and healthcare tenders useful alongside the framework documents.
An open framework with unlimited suppliers
The framework has no maximum number of suppliers. Providers that satisfy the conditions of participation and reach the required evaluation threshold can be appointed.
The wider open-framework scheme can operate until December 2034, with opportunities for new suppliers to join when the framework is reopened.
Call-offs are expected to be awarded without a separate competition, using pre-evaluated framework scores together with locally determined weighting criteria. That makes the original framework response particularly important because the scoring can continue to influence commercial access after appointment.
How will bids be evaluated?
The headline weighting is:
- Price: 60%
- Quality: 30%
- Social value: 10%
The quality assessment is divided across AI performance, safety and data; clinical functionality and safety; implementation, support and operations; regulatory compliance and governance; and technical architecture and integration.
Suppliers should therefore be ready to evidence both the performance of the underlying technology and how it can be deployed safely within NHS environments.
Key areas to prepare include:
- AI and transcription performance;
- clinical safety;
- information governance;
- regulatory compliance;
- integration capability;
- implementation and onboarding;
- clinician usability;
- support arrangements;
- data security; and
- measurable social value.
Quick facts
- Buyer: Digital Health and Care Wales
- Reference: PRJ-1331
- Estimated value: £10m excluding VAT / £12m including VAT
- Initial framework start: 7 December 2026
- Open framework end: 6 December 2034
- Maximum suppliers: Unlimited
- Supplier fee: 0%
- Enquiry deadline: 4 September 2026
- Tender deadline: 16 September 2026 at 12:00pm
- Evaluation: 60% price / 30% quality / 10% social value
- View the official Find a Tender notice
Strengthen your clinical case
A technically capable AI solution still needs to demonstrate that it can work safely, reliably and practically within NHS workflows.
The strongest submissions should connect technical functionality directly to clinical use, implementation, governance and measurable benefits rather than relying on product features alone.
Thornton & Lowe can support technology and healthcare suppliers with bid strategy, quality responses and independent tender reviews. Contact us to discuss your AVT framework bid.
