Smarter procurement for better European healthcare
Across Europe, healthcare faces the challenge of doing more with limited resources. “Procurement usually focuses on buying finished products,” says project coordinator Carlos Larrañeta Gómez-Caminero, from the Andalucian Public Foundation for Progress and Health(opens in new window) (website in Spanish) in Spain. “We wanted to approach it the other way round. Defining our challenges and then going out to the market to find solutions.”
Flipping the model
Procure4Health(opens in new window) set out to change how European public health systems adopt innovation. Instead of adapting to solutions already on the market, the project encouraged public health buyers to identify their needs first and then invite developers to respond. Procure4Health brought together 33 partners from 15 countries, covering health and social care procurers and supporting organisations at local, regional and European level, all testing new ways of bringing innovation into healthcare. One of the project’s main tasks was to help buyers pin down their procurement needs. Partners worked in groups on topics such as digital health, sustainability, precision medicine and integrated care, alongside work on value and impact. Together, they defined the challenges common to all countries, decided which ones to prioritise and tested them with suppliers through open market consultations, following the EAFIP(opens in new window) methodology. The project also funded 29 cascade training opportunities helping spread experience across Europe and supported twinning partnerships designed to share knowledge and build capacity, alongside a detailed action plan(opens in new window) produced for health organisations new to the approach. Additionally, insights and takeaways from the project were published and brought together in a book(opens in new window).
A concrete result
One of Procure4Health’s key outcomes is THERESA PCP, a follow-on EU project which brings together hospitals and research organisations from Belgium, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain to develop on-site systems for treating hospital wastewater and removing some of healthcare’s most hazardous pollutants. Currently, there is no single process that handles antibiotics, cytostatic drugs and antibiotic-resistant bacteria altogether. “An open market consultation showed that solutions existed for individual pollutants, but not for all of them together,” notes Larrañeta. A pre-commercial procurement approach allowed health systems to develop and test a more complete solution. “Seeing this shared challenge developed during the project turn into a funded PCP was a real achievement,” he adds.
Cross-border cooperation
The project also changed how health buyers collaborate across Europe. In Belgium and France, central purchasing bodies involved in the project formed a new partnership, allowing them to work together more effectively on innovative solutions. For smaller or more fragmented health systems, this kind of joint approach can make procurement of innovation easier and more economically viable. Procure4Health also highlighted the importance of value-based procurement, especially for healthcare providers trying to judge whether a new solution is worth adopting in practice. This remained one of the project’s key follow-on areas, as partners continue to work on procurement criteria that go beyond price alone.
The road ahead
Although the project ended in May 2025, work hasn’t stopped for Procure4Health. Partners continue to focus on procurement criteria related to sustainability and value, while developing follow-on proposals. The project also published a policy paper(opens in new window) that makes recommendations and proposes practical measures to strengthen understanding, build capacity and scale up innovation procurement in healthcare across Europe. But for Larrañeta, this is about more than procurement. “Almost 25 % of clinicians’ weekly activity is devoted to administrative tasks,” he notes. Reducing that burden could free up more time for clinicians to focus on patients.