Pre-commercial Procurement of innovative ICT-enabled integrated care solutions to advance multidisciplinary health and care for patients with chronic heart failure

ended

Five INCAREHEART public procurers from five countries will jointly procure an ICT-enabled integrated care solution to effectively support the management of a multidisciplinary care and support model for people living with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF). Building on the partial advances seen in integrated healthcare delivery, for the first time a range of features will be integrated into a modular solution to effectively bring different care providers, family carers, and patients into a shared CHF care pathway cutting across diagnosis, acute care and jointly managed long term care. INCAREHEART will profoundly improve the quality of care and support for CHF patients as well as the cost-effectiveness of European health and social care systems by radically improving, integrating, and coordinating care. Introducing seamless transitional care processes are expected to effectively reduce emergency care needs, hospitalisation rates as well as increase treatment adherence. The INCAREHEART solution will at its core seamlessly integrate into existing ICT systems, but also into processes and working practices. The procurers have developed a comprehensive framework for setting out the design requirements to be addressed by an integrated ICT-enabled heart failure care solution. Suppliers will be rigorously evaluated after each of the procurement phases, comprising (I) an open market consultation, (II) specification of architecture and system aligned to requirements of patients, peers, and providers, (III) prototype development and testing with end-users and (IV) effectiveness proven in a trial with 500 patients and 125 professionals. INCAREHEART will serve 1,320,000 million patients with heart failure once it is fully rolled out in the procurer countries. Proven ability to cover the different health systems promises INCAREHEART suppliers’ easy entry into other EU markets and beyond, a very strong contribution to overcoming fragmentation of demand and fostering the global market.