Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ProEmpower (Procuring innovative ICT for patient empowerment and self-management for type 2 diabetes mellitus)
Berichtszeitraum: 2017-08-01 bis 2020-09-30
ProEmpower is a pre–commercial procurement (PCP) project to buy R&D (research and development) services to improve the treatment and self-management of diabetes type 2 patients using a Personalised Diabetes Management Solution. The project brings together procurers from four regions in Europe. The regional health procurement bodies are supported by health provider organisations and consultancies.
The solutions are expected to improve the detection of type II diabetes and the treatment through person-centred and personalised care. This includes addressing the problems of the patients, improving their knowledge of diabetes, supporting them in communicating their treatment preference to physicians and facilitating a healthy lifestyle.
• Turkey: The ProEmpower solutions are seen as a good choice for filling a current technological gap in MOH’s chronic disease management system, which currently does not have an interface for the patient and which does not come with a shared care plan as those in the two ProEmpower solutions. It is the mid-term plan of Ministry of Health of Turkey to integrate a patient interface into e-Nabız, personal health record system of Turkey, and connect the patient and their doctor on a shared care plan. As any public procurement of commercial solutions in healthcare needs to encompass the whole of Turkey’s target population (in this case more than 8 million type-2 diabetes patients), the procurement needs to be carefully planned during the course of 2021.
• Portugal: SPMS has identified the need for a fruther technical and clinical review to ensure that any solution procured from the outside is fully integrated into the SPMS ecosystem of apps and services, incl. the national EHR system. A further important step in the country is a strong political backing, which is expected to be solidified during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU (first half of 2021).
• Italy: The use of telemedicine services related to administrative and clinical-assistance procedures was activated in Federico II University Hospital (FOUND) due to the Covid-19 pandemic and following a regional emergency directive aimed at protecting the health of citizens with diabetes. However, reimbursement of telemedicine in the long run requires the implementation of a clinical trial to verify the effectiveness and safety of the ProEmpower solutions in order to make them available to public health organisations. FOUND is seeking opportunities to carry out such a trial in 2021-2022.
• Spain: SMS has acquired significant experience running PCP procedures that equally require high maturity in terms of legal, administrative and technical training.
In addition to procurer-specific milestones, some common milestones to large-scale procurement have been identified, such as further technological improvements following the pilot feedback, and the need for conducting a clinical trial to verify the solutions’ effectiveness and safety. Procurers SMS and FOUND have shown interest in pursuing a joint international collaboration focusing on those further improvements by participating in a Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) project as a follow-up of ProEmpower. They are currently exploiring suitable PPI opportunities in the period 2021-2022.
Both the ProEmpower procurers and the two supplier consortia are committed to collaborate on the future procurement steps.