Stage 4: test and assurance

As the NHS Digital compliance process describes,  if a supplier does not already have a conformant product (SMS Client), technical conformance approval must be obtained by providing technical information and test evidence. If the client is to be deployed, the End User must also approve and accept the developed client.

The completion of the technical conformance approval process requires the Supplier to provide evidence of the developed SMS client in line with the web service interface requirements, generic interoperability (ITK) requirements and the specific SMS client requirements.

Full technical conformance approval is achieved by completing the assurance steps, resulting in the SMS Client being awarded a status of ‘technically conformant’ and an ITK conformance certificate being issued:

• functional testing
• Supplier Conformance Assessment List (completed by supplier and reviewed by NHS Digital)
• ITK Certification requirements (including completion of the supplier certified requirements spreadsheet by the supplier). 

When the certificate is issued, the Supplier will be asked to provide details for the NHS Digital web hosted ITK conformance catalogue which is a list of conformant products, with links to the company websites of the Supplier of those products.

Once the ITK conformance certificate has been granted, the Supplier will be asked to seek end user approval of the developed Client and readiness to accept the service.  This then leads to NHS Digital issuing the relevant agreements to the supplier and end user organisation.