The procurers have performed an analysis of their procurement process and implications for a large-scale procurement in the future and have detailed their ambitions towards such a procurement. Procurer-specific milestones have been identified towards that goal, which include:
• 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.
