NHS service standard
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11. Choose the right tools and technology
Choose tools and technology that let you build a good service in an efficient, cost effective way.
Build a sustainable service which allows you to change direction in future.
Why it's important
When you make a decision about technology, you're making a significant investment. The choices you make will have a huge impact on your ability to create, iterate and operate the service in a flexible, sustainable way.
What you should do
When considering technical architecture, choice of programming languages, development toolchain and other technology choices, your team should be able to show that you:
- use appropriate tools and technologies to create and operate a good service in a cost effective way – for example, by automating things where possible
- use HTML5 by default
- have made good decisions about what technology to reuse or build and what to buy
- understand tech decisions that have been made outside your team and challenge these decisions where it will improve the service
- understand total cost of ownership of the technology and have kept the ability to make different choices in future - for example, reducing the chances of getting locked into contracts for specific tools and suppliers by using open standards
- encourage team members to challenge existing processes and re-use resources
- use standard NHS technology components where possible, for example: the NHS login to authenticate identity and the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) to manage patient demographic data
- have an effective approach to managing any legacy technology the service integrates with or depends on
- use the AI and Digital Regulations Service website to help you make decisions about buying digital healthcare technologies
Guidance
NHS service manual
GOV.UK resources
- Building a resilient frontend using progressive enhancement
- Choosing technology: an introduction
- Environmentally sustainable services
- Make your technology sustainable
- Technology Code of Practice
- Working with open standards
Read more about this
- All digital services need to be delivered sustainably – part of NHS architecture principles (NHS England)
- A guide to good practice for digital and data-driven health technologies (Department of Health and Social Care)
- Developer and integration hub (NHS England)
- Identity verification and authentication standard for digital health and care services, DAPB3051 (NHS England, previously DCB3051)
Help us improve this guidance
Share insights or feedback and take part in the discussion. We use GitHub as a collaboration space. All the information on it is open to the public.
If you've gone through a service assessment or peer review, we're especially interested to hear from you.
Read more about how to feedback or share insights.
If you have any questions, get in touch with the service manual team.
Updated: April 2025