On Thursday 7 April, TIQUE will present the conclusions gathered during the Open Market Consultation it held from October 2021 to February 2022.

More than 150 professionals in the sector joined the 4 seminars TIQUE ran during this period, where they were given information on the scope of the project, its team members, funding and timeline. At the same time, a questionnaire was made available online to gather information on the state of the art in the sector and trends in technology and services for patients with or at risk of heart problems.

The information gathered informs the development of the final service contract specifications.  
If you are interested in hearing about the results of TIQUE’s OMC directly from its three public procurers - Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Spain), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy), and Region Västerbotten (Sweden) – we invite you to join us at the webinar!

ABOUT TIQUE?

TIQUE (Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) of InnovaTIve care services to deliver QUick rEsponses to complex patients with advanced heart failure through integrated care) is a PCP project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program with the goal of improving the health care services for patients suffering from Advanced Heart Failure, who are likely to have co-existing chronic conditions (multi-morbidity), and who may be frail or at risk of becoming frail.

To this end, TIQUE aims to deliver technology-enabled all-in-one solutions to implement integrated care for Advanced Heart Failure (AHF) patients, flexible enough to adapt to a variety of European healthcare systems and enable ongoing developments and innovations.

Solutions will include a Virtual Care Centre to facilitate the provision of the right care, at the right time, in the right place.

Niclas Forsling is working towards providing Healthcare and Care through distance spanning solutions in Region Västerbotten, one of the northernmost Swedish counties, with vast areas of wilderness and remotely connected populations. The initiative, from the Nordic Council of ministers, is part of his work at the Center for Rural Medicine, an R&D unit within the healthcare provider for Region Västerbotten.

Straight out of his business degree, Niclas got involved with Interreg, an EU instrument to help coordinate policy across borders through project funding, eventually heading the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme. In 2015, he joined the Council of Nordic Ministers Secretariat to help integrate the EU’s macro regional strategies for the Baltic Sea Region. Seeking a more adequate setting to launch a series of healthcare projects he had in mind, Niclas joined the Centre for Rural Medicine in 2017.

“The level of complexity in healthcare and care is lower in remote and rural settings,” Niclas tells me, “And I am of the view that innovative development can best be launched in low complexed environments”.

“As part of my work for the Centre for Rural Medicine,” he continues, “I have been running Healthcare and Care through distance spanning solutions to move healthcare closer to people’s homes. In the process, we have discovered that implemented service solutions for home healthcare and self-monitoring - especially for patients with severe conditions - are limited to non-existent in the Nordics. So, when we were asked to join TIQUE, we were already aware that this is a field that requires development.”

“In Sweden there is currently a primary care reform to turn primary care into the central wheel of the entire healthcare system. This means that primary care centres will be able to connect with specialist care and provide services to patients with more advanced conditions; we believe that this can be achieved with the support of sophisticated technology”

“Not only is this very important to patients and their families; a reduction in emergency admissions is a high priority too due to the high costs involved, especially with the long distances that we work with in our geographical context.”

“In our view, TIQUE is working precisely towards these same aims. TIQUE can become a cornerstone in how to treat patients with advanced chronic conditions across the entire population in Region Västerbotten.”

Thank you for your interest in this market sounding exercise concerning innovation in advanced heart failure care to improve patient outcomes.

Interested parties from all parts of the supply chain are invited to express their interest and register for market consultation events by completing this form. Deadline for completion of the forms is 30th September 2021. Download TIQUE’s information brochure.

We are interested in information and innovation from all parts of the supply chain that could:

• contribute to improvements in one or more aspects of the requirement;
• contribute to a new total solution;
• provide a total solution;
• involve incremental improvements or a step change in the short, medium and long term.

We are interested in your views on the feasibility of the requirement, and the capability and capacity of the market to offer a solution that meets our unmet needs and requirements.

This is a first procedure for interacting with companies governed by the conditions established in articles 40 and 41 of directive 24/2014 Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement.

The results of this market sounding and consultation with the supply chain will be used by the TIQUE PCP project to inform and develop a pre-commercial procurement specification and strategy.

Additionally, the TIQUE project has defined a complete Open Market Consultation (OMC) procedure for interaction with economic operators that will be held from October 2021 to January 2022, in which the public procurers will pro-actively communicate their needs, requirements and planned procurement. The OMC procedure will be published and updated in TIQUE 's website.

Participants and economic operators will be able to present their solutions to the Consortium. The participation of potential bidders in the OMC does not affect competition in any future tender procedures.

NOTE: During this market sounding, TIQUE PCP project is taking appropriate measures to ensure that participation of potential suppliers will not have the effect of distorting competition and will not result in a violation of the principles of non-discrimination and transparency.

Please note that all information you provide will be used and retained by TIQUE PCP project. Consolidated contributions from this exercise may be published in a non-attributable form as part of further market consultation. Your response should specifically identify areas of proprietary or commercially sensitive information that you would not wish to be divulged.

Interested in TIQUE?

Dr. Sonia Mirabet is chief of the heart failure unit at Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, the oldest healthcare institution in Spain - more than six centuries old - and where, in 1984, the first heart transplant was carried out in the country. Sonia landed in Sant Pau straight out of her residency, back when heart failure treatments were still in their infancy. She has since helped build its HF unit into what it is today, a reference in Europe.

“Heart Failure,” she tells me, “is one of the main health problems today. The syndrome has high morbidity and mortality rates, its symptoms are very limiting for patients, it causes repeated hospitalisations (often requiring urgent care), leading to poor quality of life for patients and a heavy use of healthcare resources.”

One of the approaches taken by hospitals in Europe towards treating HF has been the development of specialized units of care, known as heart failure units (HFUs), where patients are diagnosed, treated, and followed up, and where the actions of the different entities and professionals involved in their care - from local primary care units to specialized central departments - are coordinated.

Since their emergence in the 1980s, HFUs have evolved to become models of disease management, suggesting that continuous follow-up and multidisciplinary care improve patients’ lives and, by doing so, reduce the need for hospital care (especially emergency care), affecting the overall cost of the syndrome.  Sant Pau’s HFU, set up by Dr. Bayes Genis, was among the first in Spain. Sonia joined early on, and has grown with it to become its third director.

TIQUE was created to expand on the work of these units, and the project was born from an initiative of Sant Pau’s cardiology department. “My role in TIQUE”, writes Sonia, “has been to provide information about the condition and how it is treated today, as well as about the unmet needs we find in treating these patients, and how these needs can be met”.

“The fundamental aim of TIQUE”, she continues, “is to improve the quality of life of patients with HF. To achieve this, we need to work on prevention, on avoiding cardiac decompensations, and on ensuring that patients receive the care they need, when they need it and in the most appropriate health care setting according to the stage of the condition.”

This means working on facilitating communication between professionals, on empowering patients and their carers, on training staff, on developing the home-based hospital…

Talking to Sonia, I understand why TIQUE’s requirements include a platform where every professional involved in a patient’s case can log in and check what every other professional involved in the case has to say about it. Or why it asks for solutions in data portability, or in tracking and monitoring technologies… I especially understand why TIQUE insists that potential tenderers team up to cover the scope of its requirements.

While reading Sonia's answers to my questions, I cannot help wonder what it means, at a personal level, to dedicate one’s life work to reviving and replacing patients’ hearts. In a live interview she gave elsewhere, I found she had to say this about her relationship to heart-transplant patients: 

“We end up building very close relationships with patients. They come to us in a critical state. Physically, they’re very limited by the condition, and mentally they’re exhausted after all that time spent in waiting lists, waiting for an organ that has just now arrived. Then comes the joy, the hope of a new life, and then the postoperative procedures and ordeals; we go through all these experiences with them and, because of their intensity, patients share with us not only their medical conditions, but very personal situations too.”

EU project TIQUE announces the launch of its Open Market Consultation designed to reach potential market players from all parts of the supply chain and invite them to join the planned activities by:

• Attending the virtual national and international events to listen directly from the buyers.
• Completing the Market Questionnaire and help inform the tender specification.
•  Participating in supplier matchmaking to find potential partners.
• Joining the Q&A sessions.

Barcelona, 29 September, 2021.- Before launching TIQUE’s call for tenders next year (June 21), TIQUE is embarking on an Open Market Consultation, starting October 2021. Successful pre-commercial procurement requires involving potential researchers, technology companies and service providers at the earliest possible stage. The Open Market Consultation (OMC) aims both to communicate and to explore:

• To communicate TIQUE’s plans to organisations out there developing ideas that can contribute to realising the vision.
• To explore compatible technologies, to mould TIQUE’s vision to reflect and harness the actual technological power offered by the market.

The OMC consists in an in-depth dialogue with the industry to clarify the objectives of the procurement, the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process and the main clauses to be included in the contracts.

TIQUE invites all interested companies to join the OMC activities to learn about the healthcare challenge being faced directly from its three procurers by attending any of the scheduled OMC Events.

The market response will inform the tender specification and enable the buyers to develop a co-creation model for the delivery of solutions that meet the buyers needs and have the flexibility to be adapted to different healthcare systems and situations.

The planned activities for the TIQUE OMC are:

• Four online events: three local events to be held in each of the buyers’ locations and an international event.
• A market questionnaire will be available on the project website, to gather information from the market on potential solutions to address the TIQUE challenge.
• A matchmaking tool to assist the development of collaborative partnerships between potential suppliers.

All events will be held online. Registration is open at: https://www.tiquepcp.eu/ca/web/tique/open-market-consultation

Further information will be available on TIQUE’s website: www.tiquepcp.eu

ABOUT TIQUE

The three public procurers that form TIQUE’s buyers’ group are Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Catalonia), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy), and Region Västerbotten (Sweden). Together they plan to acquire, through a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process, innovaTIve and integrated care services that deliver QUick rEsponses to complex patients suffering from advanced heart failure.

As there is no solution currently available to meet the buyers' needs, the Buyers Group wish to procure the research and development of a technology-enabled all-in-one solution to implement integrated care solutions to Advanced Heart Failure patients, flexible enough to adapt to a variety of European healthcare systems. The solution will include a Virtual Care Centre to facilitate the provision of the right care, at the right moment, in the right place.

TIQUE is directing a total of € 4.40 million, co-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme.

TIQUE is a project funded by the European research and development programme Horizon2020 under GA 965356.

12 November 2021

More than 150 people attended the information events held by European project TIQUE.

• Interested companies had the opportunity to present their products and proposals.

• TIQUE opens a matchmaking platform on its website to help match the array of partial solutions.

• TIQUE is disseminating a questionnaire designed to gather feedback from the sector in elaborating the specifications of its upcoming call for tenders.

More than 150 attendees from around 40 technology companies related to the health and heart disease prevention sector participated in the information sessions held by European project TIQUE last October. The four events took place virtually and included the participation of the project’s public procurers: Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Spain), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy), and Region Västerbotten (Sweden).

These events provided information on the scope and challenges of TIQUE, the different phases of a PCP and the capital allocated to cover the costs of each phase. At the international event, which was held last, companies interested in participating in the tender were given the opportunity to present their products and proposals to the audience. DigimEvo, Eurecat, GooApps, HumanITcare, Lighthouse Disruptive Innovation Group, Omron, Pulso, Roche and Trak presented their companies and products.

Market consultation

In addition, over the coming months and until 31 January, a consultation will be held to ascertain the state of the technology market for services related to solutions for patients with heart conditions. To this end, TIQUE will disseminate a questionnaire that will gather information on technology (systems integration, artificial intelligence tools, strategic consultancy, patient care services, etc.) with the aim of taking the pulse of the sector and drawing up the tender specifications with the information gathered.

Matchmaking section

Given the size and scope of TIQUE, the project will facilitate agreements between complementary companies to help create consortia capable of implementing the full requested service in the healthcare systems of the three European public bodies promoting the project. To this end, a matchmaking platform will be hosted on TIQUE’s official website where large and small European companies can present their solutions, and where they will be able to integrate them in the consortia that are expected to emerge in the following phases of the project.

The procurement instrument chosen by TIQUE is a PCP (Pre-commercial Procurement), facilitating early technology procurement that can help innovative companies integrate their solutions with others, and test their innovations in real pilot cases, in view of commercialising them eventually.  

ABOUT TIQUE

Three public procurers conform the procurement group known as TIQUE, namely: Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Catalonia), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy) and Region Västerbotten (Sweden). Together they plan to acquire, through a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) instrument, innovative and integrated care services that provide rapid responses to complex patients with advanced heart failure.

To this end, TIQUE will invest a total of 4.40 million, co-funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme under agreement 965356.

EU’s Official Journal publishes a Prior Information Notice (PIN) for TIQUE, a European project to develop technologies and health services for the preventive monitoring of heart failure conditions

• EC co-founds more than €4.40 million to be invested in the project.
• TIQUE will channel the investment through a Pre-Commercial Procurement instrument to be launched June 2022
• An Open Market Consultation is scheduled to start October 2021

Barcelona, 23 July, 2021.- The Prior Information Notice (PIN) of European project TIQUE has been published in TED (Tenders Electronic Daily - Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU). The official publication offers preliminary information on TIQUE’s PCP and on the Open Market Consultation Events that will take place from October 2021 on.

TIQUE is directing a total of € 4.40 million, co-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, towards the development of innovative technologies and health services to monitor and respond faster to patients suffering from advanced heart failure in Europe. The investment will be channelled through a Pre-Commercial Procurement instrument, a type of tendering process, to be launched next spring.

An integrated care model

Research shows that, when dealing with chronic diseases, a strict patient follow-up prevents costly deteriorations. The current ICT includes tools that can be used to monitor patients in real time, and artificial intelligence to assess and interpret data to help anticipate the care needs of a patient at risk. The technology, applied in an integrated care model, where the patient is treated comprehensively, and where the treatment combines medical procedures with digitally informed community support, can spare patients unnecessary suffering and substantially relieve healthcare budgets.

To meet these challenges, TIQUE is working on tools to help the various interested organisations design their tender proposals. To this end, they will be able to access information on the requirements of the tender, share their projects with TIQUE, and obtain guidance in the search for potential partners, during the Open Market Consultation launched October 2021 and from then until January 2022. 

Further information will be available on TIQUE’s website: https://www.tiquepcp.eu/

ABOUT TIQUE

The three public procurers that form TIQUE’s buyers’ group are Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Catalonia), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy), and Region Västerbotten (Sweden). Together they plan to acquire, through a Pre-Commercial Procurement instrument (PCP), innovaTIve and integrated care services that deliver QUick rEsponses to complex patients suffering from advanced heart failure.

Research shows that integrated care is a crucial step in tackling these problems. Patients' wellbeing and engagement can be maximized through shared decision-making, education and by supporting their self-management. Yet solutions for integrated care have so far only been implemented locally, and the market does not offer valid and comprehensive alternatives.

As systemic constraints do not allow public procurers to offer tenders towards this end, TIQUE has recognised that Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) tools offer a valid alternative. By stimulating the market to advance solutions through a PCP, TIQUE will help bring integrated care solutions that implement a predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory model of healthcare services for patients suffering from heart failure.

TIQUE is a project funded by the European research and development programme Horizon2020 under GA 965356.

Official launch of TIQUE, a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) project, funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program under Grant Agreement No 965356, investing in Research and Development (R&D) services to bring to the market “innovaTIve care services, enhanced with technology, to deliver QUick rEsponses for individuals with advanced heart failure and complex care needs through integrated care”.

TIQUE brings together 8 partners from 5 countries, with three public procurers: Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Catalonia), Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino (Italy) and Region Västerbotten (Sweden) and five supporting partners (AQuAS, TICSalut, Assuta Medical Center, Jera Consulting and VALDE Innova).

Chronic conditions are on the rise worldwide. An ageing population and changes in societal behaviour are contributing to a steady increase in these common and costly long-term health problems. European countries, as many other countries worldwide, face a rapid growth in the number of inhabitants living with chronic conditions and multimorbidity (i.e. the co-existence of two or more chronic diseases), which sets a high pressure on their health systems.

The care model in place for these patients implies one specialist for each comorbidity, primary healthcare for the day to day, and frequently formal and informal carers, leading to fragmented healthcare delivery. The medication becomes complex to manage and risky if not handled properly. The problem is that this care team does not behalf in a coordinated manner and the global vision, including psychological and environmental circumstances, is commonly lost.

Heart failure probably represents the most daunting challenge among all chronic illnesses due to its increasing prevalence, its direct and associated morbidity, and its significant dependence on hospital-based care that generates worrying economic costs. Moreover, poor management of this condition can increase the risk and frequency of acute episodes resulting in hospitalizations, poor quality of life for patients and high burden on healthcare systems. Each acute episode can, in turn, worsen the chronic condition leading to reduced cardiac function, high morbidity and mortality.

TIQUE relies on the fact that when dealing with chronic diseases, a strict patient follow-up prevents these costly deteriorations. The current ICT offer allows the use of technological tools such as sensors for monitoring patients in real time, and going a little bit further, artificial intelligence or big data can help preventing an exacerbation crisis. TIQUE plans to make extensive use of monitoring devices, data, and algorithms to successfully anticipate the care needs of a patient at risk.

TIQUE also combines community intervention with digital insight to support patients and carers as they are usually in a personal hard situation, motivation and human support for both of them are critical.

TIQUE intervention is based on “integrated care”, which means building a comprehensive vision of the person, shared with the care team, and guaranteeing a continuity of care by the most suitable professional at each time.

And finally, TIQUE is looking for impact. Impact means long term sustainability, best clinical and perceived solution to patients, and better optimization of the time of health professionals.

For this reason, TIQUE is willing to purchase the research and development of the design of a technology-enabled all-in-one service, flexible enough to adapt to a large variety of European healthcare systems. This will allow the full development of the value-based TIQUE model tailored to each of the participant procurers complementing existing public resources with a public-private partnership. TIQUE will bridge the gap between offer and demand by creating a new generation of high tech market solutions to implement integrated care. It will focus on approaches to treatment for patients with advanced heart failure and co-existing chronic conditions, frail or at risk of becoming frail. TIQUE will do that by subcontracting R&D services to the industry within a competition, articulated under the funding instrument called Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP). PCP challenges industry from the demand side to develop innovative solutions to cover public sector needs and it provides a first customer reference that enables companies to create competitive advantage on the market.

To run and successfully impact the market, TIQUE includes a complementary team: three public administrations defining the needs and validating the solutions (Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Azienda Sanitaria Locale Avellino, and Region Västerbotten), two Catalan public agencies leading the co-designing with all stakeholders, the interoperability and the evaluation framework (TIC Salut and AQuAS), a technological partner from Israel (Assuta Medical Centers) and two SMEs supporting the coordination and the implementation of the PCP instrument (JERA Consulting and VALDE Innova). The lead procurer and the coordinator of the project is Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, already experienced in running EU funded projects of join procurement of innovative solutions.

TIQUE has a planned duration of 60 months, starting from 1st March 2021.

For further information please contact:

Alicia Feliciano

Press Officer

info@tiquepcp.eu

During his telecom engineering studies, Jesús Berdún realised he was more interested in the benefits telecom technologies could bring than in the technologies themselves. As he was finishing his degree, he joined AUCOOP, a student association for international cooperation, collaborating with other universities and NGOs in health and education projects. He spent time in Ethiopia developing ICT for higher education, later in Nicaragua, Honduras and Panamá working on a water and sanitation IT project funded by the World Bank. His Master Thesis (for a degree in human development and cooperation) was on the evaluation of a telemedicine programme in Cameroon.

These experiences eventually led Jesús to pursue his professional career locally, in the healthcare sector. For the last seven years, he has been working in TICSALUT, a foundation under the Health Ministry of Catalonia, dedicated to promote the digital transformation of health and social care sectors. Beyond providing expertise and methodologies on digitisation, TICSALUT has drawn up a “strategic vision of digital health for the public health ecosystem in Catalonia”, as Jesús puts it in our email conversation.

That’s precisely where TIQUE and TICSALUT meet:  

“Our central contribution [to TIQUE] is making sure the results of the project are compatible with other initiatives in Catalonia, and that they can be integrated and replicated in other regions”, writes Jesús.

As TIQUE launches the Pre-Commercial Public Procurement process, with an Open Market Consultation from this October and a tender June 2022, “Fundació will be there to contribute to this systemic vision”, helping ensure both the tender specifications and the tendered solutions are compatible and replicable.

TIQUE and TICSALUT partnered back in 2020 to apply for funds from the EC’s 8th European Framework Programme, known as Horizon 2020, which has been running since 2014 with a total budget of €80 trillion. The programme was set up to fund research that benefits European citizens, promotes industrial leadership in Europe and strengthens scientific excellence. The programme ended up co-funding TIQUE’s total budget of €5.69 million.

When I ask Jesús why he believes in TIQUE, he answers that digital health is already a reality. He explains that the COVID-19 “pandemic has shed light on the importance of securing non-face-to-face care channels as part of healthcare services”. By procuring services that put into practice the possibilities new technologies offer in terms of remote monitoring and assessment of heart conditions, TIQUE is helping develop these channels. 

On the other hand, Jesús writes, “heart failure [treatments] require a very high level of collaboration between different actors and organisations”. One of the biggest challenges project TIQUE faces is

“collaboration and the integration of data between different actors, as in many cases available information is not shared, which makes it harder to provide adequate care for people suffering from this condition”.

In this sense, TIQUE’s tender specifications include an interactive digital platform where clinicians and health and social care professionals can access and share all available information on a patient’s case, and a self-management system for patients and their carers, fostering integration of data and empowering patients. As Jesús puts it, “TIQUE is in a position to provide innovative tools to improve communication and collaboration between all these actors”.

Talking to an expert on eHealth, and a telecom engineer, I can´t help but wonder what kinds of technologies he dreams TIQUE will put to use, but he brings me back to earth. “More than technologies,” he writes, “I would like to talk about services, services that allow a more collaborative environment between professionals, patients and caregivers dealing with heart failure.”

“Today we have a lot of information,” he continues,

“but we are limited by the fact that data is siloed, not accessible by multiple actors. There is increasing talk of the right to data portability in health. This right would allow citizens to share data at will in different contexts. For example, I could share my data with a private centre to get a second opinion, or donate my data for research, or allow a family member to access my data to get better follow-up.”

“Project TIQUE will help us progress in these areas”, he writes.

Before he leaves, I ask him what kind of reading he would recommend to a novice content creator for project TIQUE, and he answers The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands by Dr. Eric Topol. I acquire a digital copy of the book, and as chapter one starts, Dr. Topol mentions a Seinfeld TV show episode that serves as a funny illustration of the current paradigm, where doctors are in the privileged position to label patients as difficult. Though of course the episode is just a silly caricature, I think I understand a bit better what is meant by patient empowerment.