Access and Identity Management System

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is seeking to procure an Access and Identity Management Service (AIMS) consisting of both an Identity Provider (IdP) and Access Management Federation (AMF). The service will authenticate users and authorise access to content, verifying eligible users based on user or organisational entitlement. The aim of the service is to establish and maintain a managed service ensuring continual availability and access to content for more than 314,000 eligible users following the end of the current service contract on 30 April 2022.

AIMS will provide eligible users with access to content: digital knowledge resources purchased from publishers such as databases, journals, evidence summaries, e-books and point of care tools. This content may be purchased nationally or regionally by Health Education England (HEE), as well as locally or collectively (consortia) by individual NHS Trusts or healthcare related organisations. Eligible users are UK healthcare professionals working in the NHS, social care and other eligible organisations in line with the national eligibility criteria.

The suppliers Identity Provider (IdP) will be responsible for providing identifiers for users looking to interact with the system; asserting to the system that the identifier presented by a user is known to the publisher; and providing other information about the user via specified in Data attributes. The service must include a web browser-based interface for user self-registration and account management and an API to support these functions.

The suppliers Access Management Federation (AMF) must use SAML2 protocols and/or must be a participating member of an existing identity federation (with registered SAML IdP and SP entities) that all publishers are part of or can join.

The service must also be supported by a web-browser based interface to allow service management of accounts, access to content, audit functionality and statistics by a network of staff.

Suppliers must demonstrate working relationships with publishers of health and social care resources. This procurement is not seeking to build an AIMS system, NICE is seeking existing systems including the AMF.