A tender worth an estimated £15 million has been published by the University of Strathclyde, NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and Scotland Excel to establish a dynamic purchasing system in order to provide digital services for co-managed care.
The notice states that this procurement is intended to tackle the challenge of the existing health and social care pressures exacerbated by COVID-19, particularly the rising waiting times for diagnosis and treatment and “unsustainable levels of admission to hospital”. In addition, the notice highlights difficulties in managing long-term conditions leading to increased dependence on remote care and third sector support, and add that condition-specific work has become “even less sustainable” due to many people having more than one long-term condition.
The dynamic purchasing system is to cover seven categories, including personal data store; health data exchange; personal health and care records; long-term condition services and remote monitoring services; care in place and independent living; mental health and wellbeing; and smart housing and communities. The contract is divided into lots, and tenders may be submitted for all lots.
The notice provides details on the requirements for each category.
On the personal data store, the notice highlights a need for “cloud infrastructure to support citizen-controlled storage and exchange of personal data and identify assets safely, securely and straightforwardly.”
With regards to the health data exchange, the procurement is for “cloud infrastructure that focuses on citizen generation, reuse, and control of personal data only concerning health services”.
Looking next at the personal health and care records, the tender seeks cloud infrastructure that can handle elements common to a personal data store or health data exchange, with focus on the user experience to support literacy, dialogue, decision-making and care planning. The solution must be able to work across conditions, groups and services, offering a method to unify the guidance, alerting, messaging and data feeds from other data-sharing infrastructure “to create a more coherent, multi-purpose interface for citizens with multiple needs.”
On long-term condition services, the opportunity is to provide a “new ability for citizens to share their experiences, needs, preferences and activity data.” The system is planned to provide “asynchronous, remote service delivery” capable of shifting from appointment-based care to ongoing dialogue-based care, with use of data sharing, messaging and citizen self-assessment.
For care in place/independent living, the procurement seeks a “new ability for citizens, their informal circle of care and professionals across agencies to use digital tools to create shared care assessments, timelines and plans”, making social prescribing targeting more preventative and enabling holistic care through digital navigation and discovery tools.
On mental health and wellbeing, the notice highlights the need for a solution capable of supporting citizens to share their activity, lifestyle, mood and other wellbeing data. It should focus on allowing citizens and their informal circle of care to “connect using digital tools to support communication, peer support and entertainment.”
Finally, on smart communities/housing, a solution is sought to equip homes with digital technologies that can track activities of daily living and identify trends, along with supporting users to connect through digital means.
Suppliers responding to the tender must provide details about their services including two relevant examples of services carried out in the last three years, as specified for each of the categories the supplier is applying for.
The initial contract is for 48 months, with options to extend for up to 24 months.
To read the procurement notice in full, please click here.
