NHS DTAC Explained: A Practical Guide for UK Digital Health Startups

What is NHS DTAC and why does it matter?

If you’re building digital health products for the UK market, the NHS Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) is now one of the most important frameworks you need to understand. DTAC acts as the national baseline for digital health technologies used within NHS organisations and social care. It consolidates the key requirements around clinical safety, data protection, security, interoperability, usability, and accessibility into a single, practical assessment.

For NHS buyers, DTAC is a quick way to determine whether a digital product is safe, secure, and appropriate for clinical use.
For suppliers, meeting DTAC doesn’t guarantee a contract — but failing it almost always shuts the door. If your product touches NHS workflows, data, or patients, DTAC is your entry ticket.

Who needs to meet DTAC?

DTAC applies widely across:

• Digital health startups entering NHS markets
• MedTech companies with companion apps or digital components
• SaaS platforms used by clinicians, administrators, or patients
• Remote monitoring tools
• Chronic condition management platforms
• Any vendor handling NHS patient data or supporting staff workflows

It applies whether the product is patient-facing, clinician-facing, or operational. If an NHS organisation will use it, you will be asked about DTAC.

What does DTAC actually assess?

DTAC is built around five core components. Understanding these early helps development teams bake in compliance rather than retrofitting it later.

1. Clinical safety

You must show that you’ve identified potential clinical risks and have a structured approach to mitigating them. This often includes appointing a Clinical Safety Officer and producing documentation around hazards, mitigations, and workflows.

2. Data protection

Products must comply with UK GDPR and demonstrate that they protect patient data. Buyers will ask about DPIAs, data flows, consent mechanisms, retention periods, and how requests like data deletion are handled.

3. Technical security

NHS organisations expect strong security practices: encryption, access control, logging, patching processes, incident response plans, and penetration testing. Products must demonstrate resilience and operational security that aligns with industry best practice.

4. Interoperability

Your product must be able to integrate with NHS systems where appropriate. This includes using recognised standards such as FHIR, open APIs, or integration patterns that support data exchange and care continuity.

5. Usability and accessibility

DTAC explicitly assesses whether the product is usable, tested with real users, and accessible. Evidence of user testing, WCAG-aligned design, and research into user needs is required. Accessibility isn’t optional — it is a core assurance requirement.

How does DTAC reshape product and UX decisions?

For UK digital health companies, DTAC transforms compliance from an afterthought into a core design constraint. It pushes teams to:

• Tie UX decisions to safety and workflow clarity
• Document usability testing more rigorously
• Reduce complexity around critical tasks
• Consider accessibility from the first wireframes
• Make architecture decisions that support secure data flows
• Treat interoperability as part of the product strategy, not a “future phase”

Teams who use DTAC as a design brief produce safer, stronger, more scalable products — and have far fewer procurement obstacles.

What’s the smartest way to prepare for DTAC?

Three practical steps make the biggest difference:

1. Turn DTAC into a cross-functional checklist

Bring together UX, product, engineering, data protection, and clinical teams. Mark each requirement as:

• Already complete
• Needs improvement
• Not in place

This becomes your roadmap. The exercise flushes out blind spots early and aligns everyone on priorities.

2. Unify usability and clinical safety work

Instead of keeping “UX work” and “clinical safety work” separate, merge workflows:

• Use task analysis to identify critical actions
• Capture user errors and near-misses in usability testing
• Map findings into risk logs and design updates

This dual-purpose approach builds evidence for the DTAC usability section and the clinical safety section simultaneously.

3. Make security and privacy routine, not reactive

Security and data protection shouldn’t arrive at the end of development or procurement.

Build them into:

• Sprint acceptance criteria
• Architecture decisions
• Vendor assessments
• Internal QA
• DevOps processes

Teams that do this never scramble to satisfy NHS Information Governance teams at the last minute.

Interoperability: the section everyone underestimates

Interoperability is often the biggest practical barrier to adoption, especially for startups entering NHS environments for the first time.

To prepare:

• Document which NHS systems you integrate with
• Use NHS-approved standards wherever possible
• Avoid proprietary, opaque data structures
• Provide clear architectural diagrams
• Build APIs that are secure, robust, and well-documented

Every NHS buyer — from ICBs to trusts — will want to see how easily your solution fits into their ecosystem.

Accessibility: essential, not optional

DTAC expects products to meet accessibility requirements in ways that many digital health teams overlook, including:

• Appropriate colour contrast
• Screen reader support
• Keyboard navigation paths
• Clear hierarchy of information
• Avoiding jargon
• Providing alternative text for visual elements
• Designing critical tasks so they’re easy to complete for users with cognitive or physical impairments

Accessibility is both a legal requirement and a competitive advantage. Products that are easier for everyone to use are adopted faster and retained longer.

What about UKCA and medical device regulation?

If your product is a regulated medical device, you must also consider:

• UKCA or CE marking
• MHRA registration
• Compliance with medical device software standards
• Usability engineering aligned with IEC 62366
• Risk management aligned with ISO 14971

DTAC does not replace medical device regulation — it complements it.
Think of it this way:

• Medical device regulation = permission to sell
• DTAC = permission for the NHS to actually use your product

Both matter if the NHS is your target customer.

What’s the payoff for getting DTAC right early?

Teams that align with DTAC from day one consistently experience:

• Faster procurement cycles
• Smoother security and IG reviews
• Stronger internal documentation
• Fewer delays caused by rework
• More trust from NHS buyers
• A more robust and scalable product overall

Teams that treat DTAC as a box-ticking exercise at the end face the opposite: expensive redesigns, stalled contracts, and buyer frustration.

Final thought

DTAC is not just a procurement form — it’s a blueprint for building safe, effective, trustworthy digital health products in the UK. If you use it as a strategic guide rather than a compliance hurdle, it becomes a competitive advantage.

For startups and scale-ups aiming to succeed in the NHS ecosystem, getting DTAC right isn’t optional.
It’s foundational.

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