Health care innovation procurement network

Executive summary A central aspect of the Procure4Health community is to enable procurers to learn about and adopt innovation procurement practices, tools, approaches and policies for deploying sustainable and innovative solutions in health- and social care. Twinnings are a community (peer to peer) tool that enables exchange of knowledge on a particular topic by bridging knowledge from experienced actors to less experienced ones. Over a defined period, the twinning parties carry out activities such as structured study visits, workshops, training sessions and internships, leading to the effective knowledge transfer from the originator to the adopter. A twinning can focus on knowledge-exchange between two or more partners. The main concept behind twinnings is to avoid reinventing the wheel by adopting knowledge, enabling partners to learn from existing experiences that have already successfully tackled the same problems and barriers, found solutions for them, and thus help adoption to significantly shorten the adoption/implementation time and related costs. This document aims to provide I) an introduction into Twinnings and how they relate to capacity-building in the Procure4Health project, ii) the opportunity for Twinnings provided by the project and iii) the procedure for organizations to apply to them. 1 Introduction and purpose of twinnings 1.1 Why Procure4Health? The public procurement of innovation seeks to bring closer cutting-edge processes and technology to the public sector as a user who can benefit from these advances, both directly to the citizens who receive or use the services and goods purchased by the public sector and the public sector itself. It is about promoting business innovation from public demand-side, which moves about 2 billion euros a year: if 3% of the spending that the public sector makes for its provision of works, goods and services, were destined to demanded products and services, some 60,000 million euros a year would be allocated to R&D&i, almost as much as the funds from the Horizon 2020 program for the five-year period 2015-2020 (70,200 million euros), and this without any additional expense. It is estimated that an increase in investment in R&D of 3% could create up to 3.7 million new jobs and a considerable increase in GDP. The potential of the public procurement of innovation to promote development and thus quality employment is therefore enormous. Every year, public authorities in the EU spend around 10% of GDP on the purchase of Health & Social Care services (H&Sc), works and supplies. The increasing trend of the costs is a challenge for the sustainability of global health systems- Leveraging the use of innovation procurement instruments (e.g., PCP, PPI and Innovation Partnerships) could help to tackle common present and future needs and achieve best value for money, driving innovation from the demand side. However, there are still barriers to EU-wide adoption of innovation procurement, such as fragmentation of health systems, legal differences, bureaucracy, language barriers, risk aversion by policy makers and H&Sc procurers when it comes to adoption of innovation procurement, lack of appropriate procurement skills and expertise, etc. There is no central or consolidated knowledge on innovation procurement & management procedures at EU level, or appraisal of trusted tools and approaches. Procure4Health is an EU project that started in June 2022. It aims to overcome these barriers by creating the largest EU community of reference for European procurers. A consolidated database for knowledge exchange and sharing of best practices and management processes will be developed, as well as the design of training programs to consolidate this knowledge. Furthermore, the focus will be on the identification and prioritisation of common needs for the preparation of concrete innovation procurement projects and action plans in the H&Sc sector. For this, a range of support tools and opportunities are shared within the project, such as training webinars, dialogues focused on shared unmet needs, a capacity-building catalogue, and Twinnings opportunities, which are described more in detail in this document. Procure4Health will thus provide an appropriate environment for public and private procurers, as well as the wider H&Sc community, to effectively share knowledge, build capacities of procurers, define common needs and advance innovation procurement in the EU. 1.2 Procure4Health and twinnings A central aspect of the Procure4Health community is to enable procurers to learn about and adopt innovation procurement practices, tools, approaches and policies for deploying sustainable and innovative solutions in health- and social care. Procure4Health capitalises on the consortium’s experience in innovation procurement and from partners expertise in implementing sustainable practices in Pan-European healthcare. The community complements that knowledge with know-how in approaches and use of tools to scope procurement needs, define innovative specifications, carry out innovation procurement projects, and exploit the results of innovation procurements in a sustainable way. This unmatched knowledge of the community has been consolidated into a Capacity Building Catalogue (CBC) and enriched with further materials in the beginning of the project, as a resource for providing support to both procurers taking their first steps with the instrument, as well as procurers with previous experience in it. The CBC covers a range of relevant topics, such as (i) PPI and PCP, (ii) sustainable innovative procurement, (iii) evaluation frameworks, (iv) Intellectual Property Rights management, (v) go-to-market schemes, (vi) deployment of innovative solutions, and (vii) innovation procurement strategies building on current established methodologies and best practices. The range of topics are structured in a process starting from exploration of an unmet need to the finalised deployment of an innovative product and the realisation of its impact. Each major step of the journey covers a range of specific topics to be understood, addressed, and concluded to be able to proceed to the next step in the process. The major steps of the process are introduced as follows: Figure 1 Major steps in the procurement of innovative solutions The CBC will be updated throughout the project to ensure optimal relevance, for project partners as well as for external stakeholders. Adding to the stepwise capacity-building process illustrated above, the CBC also covers a section of cross-cutting priorities and challenges which can be addressed by Innovation procurement approaches, such as socially responsible procurement, cross-border procurement, organisational (innovative) transformation, etc. These are gathered under the common topic of Next generation Procurement in the CBC. Twinnings are a community (peer to peer) tool that enables the exchange of knowledge on a particular topic by bringing together experienced actors willing to pass on their experience to less experienced ones. Over a defined period, the twinning parties carry out activities such as structured study visits, workshops, training sessions and internships, leading to the effective knowledge transfer from originator to adopter. A twinning can focus on knowledge-exchange between two or more partners. The main concept behind twinnings is to avoid reinventing the wheel by adopting existing knowledge, enabling partners to learn from existing experiences that have already successfully tackled the same problems and barriers, finding solutions for them, and thus helping adoption to significantly shorten the adoption/implementation time and related costs. It is recognized that the individual partner may have in-depth experience and be considered “Originator” in one particular topic, while having less experience, and can be considered “Adopter” in another. This means that any Twinnings partnership can optionally be considered a mutual learning experience with an interchange of experience(s) covering a range of applicable topics. The objective of a twinning can be the transfer of knowledge and experience around the use of a product or service (e.g., a specific procurement tool), process or methodology (e.g., value-based procurement approaches), strategy (e.g., effective procurement policies), or a procurement business model. The Twinnings opportunity primarily targets procurers in EC member states (or associated countries), there is no distinction whether these procurers are private or public. The Twinnings open call is expected to be published widely to attract a broad range of applicants; on the P4H website, via the P4H community platform, and on the EC funding & tenders portal. 1.3 What activities are financed under a Twinning? The main objective of this scheme is to support knowledge transfer of innovation and best practices, relating to the conceptual process described above and illustrated in Figure 1 Major steps in the procurement of innovative solutions, supplemented by the breakdown of topics in Table 1 Twinnings topics. Proposed activities in a twinning work plan shall therefore pursue this goal and include one or several of the following; · Knowledge transfer meetings · Meetings with local stakeholders · Organisational readiness of innovation procurement efforts · Field visits · Viability studies · Cost/benefit analysis · Dissemination events · Preparation of reports · Travelling necessary for the twinning · Consumables necessary for the twinning The Twinning Evaluation Committee (see section 4.4) will as one of the award criteria assess scope and purpose of proposed Twinnings activities promoting capacity-building in relation to the topics described in section 2.1, in particular as part of Annex 2 – Technical section, section 1 Excellence of the proposed Twinning . 1.4 Cost eligibility and reporting Funding of Twinnings will be performed in a Lump Sum-approach [1] . Twinnings participants are obligated to adhere to financial regulations as described and implemented by the European Commission. P4H Twinnings funding is results-driven, provided as vouchers in a lump sum. As such, there is no need for a traditional administrative-justification system (e.g., counting hourly dedication or calculating workload), but getting the funding is associated with the acceptance of the agreed deliverables. As described in section 2.6 reimbursements are managed upon approval of reporting requested from Twinnings partners. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/programmes/horizon/lump-sum