Open Call SC1-DTH-10-2019-2020: Digital Health and Care Services

European CommissionDigital solutions supporting a continuum of care across a range of health and care services can relieve the pressure on governments to provide more cost-effective health and care systems by improving utilisation of healthcare and health outcomes. In this context the challenges are to network, lead and facilitate health systems research, innovation and digitisation in view of addressing key areas of interventions in health and care services including health promotion and disease prevention.

Scope

Support the health and care service provider to procure the development, testing and implementation of digital services and communication concepts that can facilitate the transition to integrated care models across health and social services and country-specific cross-institutional set-ups, including decentralised procurement environments and collaboration across institutions. Key challenges that could be addressed are patient empowerment, self-management, patient safety, patient involvement, chronic disease management, diagnosing, home-care logistics, hospital logistics, skills and independent living. These challenges could be addressed by applicable ICT domains e.g., telemedicine, mHealth, IoT, shared open source IT-based platforms, etc. as will be defined in the market consultation process. This should result in early adoption and demonstration of the potential for scaling-up the services and positive impact with evidence of appropriate incentives of various actors.

Proposals should deliver and:

  • be driven by clearly identified user needs guiding the procurers of the buyers group;
  • be driven by public and/or private procurers from each country participating (at national, regional or local level) that have responsibilities and budget control in the relevant area of supply of health and care services;
  • demonstrate strong commitment of end-users and their communities in the co-creation process;
  • as applicable contribute to the use of interoperable solutions based on open platforms and take into account existing best practices and standardisation initiatives;
  • provide robust safeguards to ensure compliance with ethical standards and privacy protection;
  • include robust time-lines, a well-structured work-plan aligned to the objectives of the different phases and according particular importance to the role played by the preparatory phase; (templates made available by the Commission are strongly recommended to be used in particular as concerns the call for tender) and;
  • identify and understand the implications for training (including aspects of organisational, digital health literacy and new collaborative innovation principles and practises), management, and retention of healthcare staff under this topic.

The procurers, hospital clusters, care services providers and other parts of the regional ecosystems should be enabled to share knowledge, test results and needs to better coordinate the primary and community care towards more local responsibility for care services, monitoring and rehabilitation. This may include aspects such as organisational processes, digital health literacy, workforce training, financing and business models, hospital and telemedicine services, home care, patient centeredness, development of shared open source IT-based platforms, data integration, standards and regulatory issues, management and retention of healthcare staff.

The service innovation should facilitate the early adoption and transferability (to other local contexts) of successful solutions addressing the innovation gap. Multi-policy/strategy collaboration across institutions (hospitals and institutions under the responsibility of municipalities), industries, academia and user communities capable of establishing dedicated operational programmes are necessary to safeguard both the service and business performance metrics and the growth potential in the innovation chain.

The proposal should include the methodology foreseen to measure progress towards the key performance areas of quality of care, sustainability and economic value within the selected key area of intervention, see e.g. MAFEIP. Sufficient travel allowances for regular information days concerning the procedures and thematic networking events (e.g. related to relevant co-ordination support actions) should be safeguarded. A plan how to implement the services would be an asset if the outcome of the project is successful. Approaches towards value based procurement are encouraged.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of around €5-6M would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Proposals of this topic should follow the specific requirements for pre-commercial procurement (PCP) supported by Horizon 2020 grants as set out in General Annex E of the WP.

Expected Impact

The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:
  • Established path to innovation, evidence of benefits of disruptive technologies that can support the development of sustainable business models, improved user and market engagement, strengthened procurement community, evidence of healthy innovation ecosystem including researchers, users, eHealth and other solution providers and procurers. Evidence in key performance areas i.e., quality in health and care, sustainability of the delivery system and economic value.
  • Increased opportunities for solution uptake across wider international procurement markets by aiming at interoperable solutions that are validated through field testing by participating procurers in multiple countries across Europe and contribution to standardisation where relevant.

Planned opening: July 2018

Deadline: 14 November 2018 17:00:00

Deadline Model: single-stage

Type of action: PCP Pre-Commercial Procurement

For topic conditions, documents and submission service, please visit:
https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/sc1-dth-10-2019-2020.html

PS: Find your partners or consortia preparing a project proposal
If you are working on Horizon 2020 research project proposals and you would be interested in a SME partner from Germany, please contact us, we are happy to share our experience, expertise and knowledge. If you need help to identify a potential partner with particular competences, facilities or experience, please join and explore our project, (HEALTH IT) SPACE, at www.healthitspace.eu.

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