Number: 4195543
Country: Spain
Source: TED
New ICT solutions for patients with chronic diseases — EMPATTICS PCP.
EU countries and H2020 associated countries.
What is this? This procurement is for R&D services to develop solutions to tackle the following challenge:
To develop new, cost-effective, scalable, interoperable and non-intrusive Information and Communication Technology solutions for patients with chronic diseases, which provide self-management tools on adherence to their care plan and acknowledgement of their disease in order to increase their empowerment and management of life. To address the need for the solution to support patients with information, monitoring and data analysis of their disease evolution and communication with health professionals responsible for their care plan.
The rationale of the focus by EMPATTICS on these chronic conditions is based on the high incidence, the social costs of these diseases, and the impact that adherence has on them, as well as empirically observed experiences of modifiable self-management behaviours and ICT use in relation to them.
The intended EMPATTICS technological solutions will improve the level of knowledge and involvement of patients in the management of their disease and the prescribed treatments. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the following aspects:
— Increasing awareness of and knowledge about the importance of adherence,
— Monitoring and evaluating patient adherence to agreed action plans,
— Providing valuable information for the self-management of patient diseases,
— Helping patients to develop healthy adaptive behaviours,
— Facilitating communication between patients and health professionals.
This is a common challenge shared by all procurers in the buyers group.
Solutions shall be developed considering patient/carers and healthcare professionals experience and preferences during both the design and implementation phases. The products and innovations achieved at this PCP shall arise through co-operation and co-creation between health-care organisations, professionals and patients/families. Bidders are expected to consider the involvement of end-users very early in the product design process. It must be considered that target users will be patients of each of the three chronic disease groups chosen by EMPATTICS (i.e., Diabetes, COPD and Heart failure), a combination of these, and even a combination of these with other conditions, at different stages of their onset and with different personal profiles (adults, elderly dependent/active people, etc.). Owing to this, patients/carers will have specific contexts, circumstances, motivations, preferences, levels of health literacy and digital competences. As the requested solutions must be highly usable and adaptable, bidders shall pay special attention to the use of an iterative design process, especially in phase 1 but also in phases 2 and 3.
The 3 selected diseases in the EMPATTICS project represent a major challenge for health systems across Europe, moving around 163 000 000 000 EUR in direct costs. The three diseases also impact on the wider social systems and economies of Member States, which are calling for adequate prevention and sustainable disease management technologies.
The main quality/efficiency improvements sought for have been agreed on as being solutions that can be demonstrated during the testing phase:
— A measurable increase in patients" empowerment;
— A measurable increase in patients" adherence to the care plan;
— A measurable difference in patients" clinical outcome;
— A measurable decrease in resource consumption.
The metrics and/or indicators which should be used to compare the results obtained before using the solutions and after using them are the following:
— To evaluate the patients" empowerment, the PAM questionnaire will be used.
— To evaluate the patients" adherence, the Moryski and Green test will be used.
— To evaluate clinical outcome, the HbA1C, FEV and MLHQ will be measured for Diabetes, COPD and Heart Failure, respectively.
— To evaluate the resource consumption, the number of events, number of exacerbations, number of hospitalisations, number of re-hospitalisations, days of stay and number of emergency visits will be used. All these data should be related to the three diseases chosen.
To compare these metrics and/or indicators, historical control will be used. The comparator group will be those patients who are selected to test the solutions. These patients will have been treated and monitored for at least 1 year prior to the testing of the solutions and their data will be available through EMR or other databases (retrospective collection of data regarding demographics, clinical and economic outcomes).
In order to achieve these improvements, the EMPATTICS solutions shall be designed for the personal use of the patients/carers suffering from chronic diseases, with the following functional requirements:
Information
1. The solutions shall gather all required information from patient"s agreed care plan.
2. The solutions shall support patients and/or carers in following and understanding their care plan.
3. The solutions shall support patients and/or carers to improve their understanding of the illness or illnesses in order to enable better self-management thereof. To do so, they shall at least provide access to suitable information sources adapted to each patient"s profile.
Monitoring
4. The solutions shall monitor relevant parameters related with patients" care plan, including vital signs, medication intake in any pharmaceutical form and behavioural data (i.e. physical activity, diet, etc.), and shall be able to do so automatically, with no intervention from the patient.
5. The solutions shall provide patients and/or carers with access to comprehensible information on their monitoring and the course of their illness.
Data analysis
6. The solutions shall detect any failure to comply with the agreed care plan.
7. The solutions shall determine the principal reasons for any shortcoming in the monitoring of the agreed care plan or the patient"s withdrawal.
8. The solutions shall learn from the data gathered from patients, in order to provide them with intelligent support which will help to ensure their continued compliance with the agreed care plan (at least through positive reinforcement regarding their achievements and health status).
Communication between patients and health professionals
9. The solutions shall provide a channel for communication between patients and health professionals. It would also be desirable to provide a channel for communication between patients and other stakeholders in their care plan.
10. Subject to authorisation from patients, the solutions shall allow the professionals responsible for their care access to relevant the data gathered and generated by said solution.
Confidentiality and Privacy
11. The solutions shall ensure that patients are the owners of all the information collected and stored by said solution.
12. Patients shall be able to decide over the solution, so as to preserve their privacy and prevent intrusiveness.
Design
13. All those devices pertaining to the solutions which need to be carried by the patient shall be light, non-intrusive and easy to use, even for patients with scant digital skills.
14. The solutions shall include the option of a wearable device that always accompanies the patients, thus avoiding the possibility of forgetting said device.
15. The solutions shall be modular in order to be configured and used in line with patients" individual.
16. The solutions shall function in each of the buyers" languages. It would also be desirable if they could be easily adaptable to function in any other EU language.
17. The solutions shall be applicable to different chronic diseases (other than Diabetes, COPD and Heart Failure), as is or with minor modifications, and shall be flexible enough to cover comorbidities.
18. The solutions shall be sustainable in the medium and long term. Amortisation and maintenance costs must not be a hindrance to the deployment of services.
19. The solutions shall be capable of supporting large-scale deployment.
20. All data and information shall be stored taking into account the security, ethical and data management framework.
21. The solutions must have the potential to accommodate lacks of connectivity.
22. All requirements regarding interoperability, ICT standards, protection of personal health information, interfacing with local systems, etc., as described in section 4.4. Compliance criteria shall be taken into account.
The PCP includes a limited set of prototype(s) and first test products or services resulting from the R&D in order to run the field testing by each successful phase 3 suppliers.
Each contractor keeps ownership of the IPRs attached to the results it generates during the PCP implementation. The tendered price is expected to take this into account.
Who is procuring? The procurement will be carried out jointly by the following organisations: Agencia Gallega para la Gestión del Conocimiento en Salud (ACIS), Central Denmark Region, Servicio Aragonés de la Salud and GCS SESAN (see www.empattics.eu). ACIS will act as the lead procurer and will coordinate and lead the joint procurement in the name and on behalf of the other organisations.
How does it work? The procurement will take the form of a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) with a phased approach, under which R&D service contracts will be awarded to a number of R&D providers in parallel, in order to be able to compare competing alternative solutions.
Each selected operator will conclude a framework agreement that covers three R&D phases.
The 3 phases are:
— solution design,
— prototyping,
— original development and validation and testing of a limited set of first products or services.
After each phase, intermediate evaluations will be carried out to progressively select the best competing solutions. The contractors with the best-value-for-money solutions will be offered a specific contract for the next phase.
Testing is expected to take place in the four buyer regions. This testing may also serve as a first customer test reference for the contractors.
Proposals may be submitted in English. All communication (before, during and after the procurement) can be made in English.
For more information see:
the project website (see www.empattics.eu),
the open market consultation Q&A (see http://empattics.eu/call-for-tender/faq),
the PCP section on the Europa website (http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/innovation-procurement),
or contact:
[email protected].
GA no. 690492, H2020 PHC-27.
