Digital health and care services – support for strategy and (early) adoption

Create favourable framework conditions for cross-border Communities of Practise (CoP) and create a network that will assist the health & care research and innovation ecosystems in taking investment decisions on future procurement of research and innovation and, eventually, on (large scale) deployment of eHealth systems and new care delivery models. The network should support existing ecosystems, create capacities, promote, co-ordinate, collaborate with other innovation accelerators and investors, and focus on adoption and scale of health innovation European wide. To facilitate sufficient knowledge brokerage all appropriate actors in the innovation chain and systems should be engaged

The consortium should represent a well-designed network of procurers and demand side actors e.g. European regions, national care authorities, NGOs, patient and consumer organisations that have proven experience in the field and the capacity to engage and consult objectively all relevant actors. The consortium should also connect to investors, National Promotional Banks and Economic Development Agencies.

Additionally, diverging expectations and risk management in innovation chain should be addressed by offering a set of support activities beyond the innovation procurement procedures including access to finance and investor networks.

Approaches addressing consumer health should be interlinked in those cases where the institutional health and care services are expected to contribute.

The consortium is expected to assist those procurers that intend to prepare for a cross-border innovation procurement e.g. guiding them to address well-defined unmet needs of users in health and care, use the repositories of best practises and implementation guidelines and providing opportunities for networking.

The findings in earlier co-ordination and support actions for procurers e.g. EPP eHealth[[European Procurers Platform - eHealth - Transforming the market for eHealth Solutions http://innovationithospitals.com/]], Inspire[[International Network Supporting Procurement of Innovation via Resources and Education, http://inspirecampus.eu/]] and EAFIP[[European Assistance for Innovation Procurement (EAFIP) http://eafip.eu/]] should be taken on-board. Networking with supply and consumer market actors, investors and business accelerators should be well established (e.g. eHealth hub[[eHealth Hub: Integrated Support for eHealth SMEs and stakeholders, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ehealth-hub-integrated-support-ehealth-smes-and-stakeholders]][5] , EIT-KIC[[European Institute of Innovation & Technology - Health, https://eit.europa.eu/eit-community/eit-health]], EIP-AHA[[European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm?section=active-healthy-ageing]], AAL[[http://www.aal-europe.eu/]] ENoLL[[European Network of Living Labs http://openlivinglabs.eu/]], National Promotional Banks, Economic Development Agencies). The progress in Blueprint Digital Transformation of health and care[[Blueprint Digital Transformation of health and care: http://ec.europa.eu/research/conferences/2016/aha-summit/index.cfm?pg=blueprint]] and EU-US MoU on health IT innovation eco-systems[[EU-US EHEALTH/ HEALTH IT MOU UPDATED ROADMAP Webinar New Roadmap Work-stream ""Supporting Transatlantic eHealth/Health IT Innovation Ecosystems', 2016 https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/final_eu-us_updated_roadmap_webinar_22516_v2-1_as_delivered.pdf]] should be incorporated.

The proposal should include parallel activities building up on the competences and capacities of the network including but not limited to:

1) Co-ordinate the development of a multi-collaborative growth policy & strategy of the European health & care procurers and other demand side actors in the quadruple helix[[Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World – a vision for Europe, EC, 2016, p.12]] systemic context. The knowledge brokerage should facilitate easy migration of competences benefitting the ecosystems at various maturity levels in the innovation chain in thematic Communities of Practise and other professional networks.

In particular, the following elements should be taken into account:

• facilitating the development of key areas of interventions in knowledge brokerage settings to get validated and accepted in health & care delivery services integrating data strategy as a fuel of novel digital health services;
• linking research institutions, university hospitals in the context of thematic CoP;
• education of new collaborative innovation principles and practises;
• building upon national initiatives, however, taking into account the Lisbon treaty[[Treaty of Lisbon amending the treaty on European Union and the treaty establishing the European Community (2007/C 306/01), see notably Articles 2C(k), 2E(a), 5a, 136a (section on Public Health), 188c(b)
  

  http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12007L/TXT&from=en]] and

• developing the existing or building up repositories of methodologies and set-ups of CoPs

2) Tailored assistance for procurers, regions, cities, national authorities and users to foster sustainable adoption e.g. by developing case specific innovation/business models, giving legal aid, addressing regulation, managing risks, sharing best practises, training and education, access to finance, addressing procurement events etc., interlinking with innovation acceleration of digital health and care industries, other actors.

3) The network should undertake activities that investigate the feasibility and facilitate the concrete preparation of a cross-border PCP for at least one shared common user and procurement need.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to €3M over three years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal requesting other amounts or duration.

Health and care service providers and users are increasingly facing complex decisions when exploring and investing in new health and care solutions. There is a need to support cross-border cooperation in preparation of procurement of research and innovative digital solutions, including on how to balance innovation risks with improved outcomes. Further support is also needed for implementing high quality policies, strategies and practises in a concerted manner and providing more confidence in addressing key areas of interventions and related unmet needs, procedures and other measures. In addition there is a need to facilitate an appropriate dialogue with the supply side and academic stakeholders to understand the constraints and possibilities.

The proposal should provide appropriate indicators to measure its progress and specific impact in the following areas:

• Concerted approach and solutions to the challenges faced by the health ecosystems as perceived by service providers and users in several countries. Increased opportunities for health and care services providers to address unmet needs. Reduced fragmentation of service providers’ demands.
• Evidences of support and collaboration with consortia developing unmet needs for innovation procurement and implementation aspects beyond the innovation procurement procedures.
• Concrete preparation of a cross-border PCP for at least one shared common procurement need.