The NHS won’t rent its patient funnel. Should you?
Last reviewed
NHS England has appointed Netcompany to build and run technology for its national adult screening programmes under a five-year, £215 million contract, with the NHS owning the system. Screening is, at heart, a patient outreach and engagement machine. The decision to own it rather than rent it is worth thinking about for any hospital.
What happened
Intelligent Health Tech reported that the contract covers all seven national adult screening programmes, including breast, cervical and bowel screening, handling around 15 million invitations a year. It includes a new national breast screening service and support for HPV self-testing kits sent to people’s homes. The systems will be built and controlled in the UK and owned by the NHS. Netcompany is working with partners including dxw, Create Change, Adroc and Softwire, with at least a third of revenue going to smaller firms. Work starts in September 2026.
My take
Strip away the public sector context and look at what screening does. It identifies a population, invites them, reminds them, books them, handles the ones who do not respond, delivers results and follows up. That is a patient acquisition and engagement funnel, running at national scale.
The NHS decided it would not rent that funnel from a vendor’s platform. It will own the technology and the data that flows through it. That is a strategic choice about control, and it has a direct parallel in private hospitals.
The private hospital version
Most private hospital groups run their own funnels: health check programmes, corporate wellness tie-ups, screening camps, chronic disease programmes, follow-up reminders. Increasingly, these run on rented platforms: a CRM vendor’s tool, a marketing automation suite, an aggregator’s booking system, a messaging provider’s templates.
Renting is often sensible. But there is a line between renting tools and renting the relationship. When the patient data, the journey logic and the performance history all sit inside a vendor’s product, the hospital becomes dependent. Switching costs rise, insights stay locked away and the vendor learns more about your patients than you do.
What to own and what to rent
- Own the patient data. Keep a clean, consented patient record in a system you control, whatever tools sit on top.
- Own the journey logic. Document who gets invited, when, with what message and what happens if they do not respond.
- Own the measurement. Funnel conversion, response rates and outcomes should live in your analytics.
- Rent the pipes. Messaging, email and call infrastructure can come from vendors, as long as you can switch.
- Be wary of aggregators. Marketplaces bring volume but own the customer. Use them for reach, not as your main funnel.
What most coverage missed
The home HPV testing piece is a clue to where outreach is heading. Care that used to require a visit is moving to the home, with digital invitations, kits by post and results online. Hospitals that treat home testing, teleconsults and remote monitoring as part of one funnel, rather than as separate services, will capture far more value.
What I would do
- List every patient outreach programme and note which system holds its data and logic.
- Identify any funnel where a vendor or aggregator effectively owns the relationship.
- Build a simple owned data layer that every programme feeds.
- Pilot one home-based outreach product, such as a home sample collection journey, with full ownership of the data.
What to watch
Watch whether the NHS model delivers better uptake and whether other health systems follow. For hospitals, the question is simpler: if your biggest vendor switched off tomorrow, would you still know who your patients are?
Source: Intelligent Health Tech. Figures as reported at the time of writing.
Questions people ask
It is a five-year, £215 million contract for Netcompany to build NHS-owned technology for all seven national adult screening programmes, covering around 15 million invitations a year.
It identifies a population, invites and reminds them, books appointments, follows up non-responders and delivers results, which mirrors a patient acquisition and engagement funnel.
Own the patient data, journey logic and measurement. Rent messaging and communication infrastructure, and use aggregators for reach rather than as the main funnel.
Home kits, digital invitations and online results move screening and diagnostics out of the hospital, so outreach should be designed as one connected journey.
