Last Friday, COCIR (the European Association of Radiological, Electrotechnical and IT Industry) has been invited to present the key recommendations that the European industry can give to the European Commission (DG Health and Consumer Protection and DG Regional Policy) and the Committee of Regions. The meeting has been part of the launch of the Committee of the Regions' Technical Platform for co-operation on Health. See agenda here.
I represented the COCIR and the main messages we send to the EU Commission and the Committee of Regions were related to the accessibility of structural funds, with the lack of vision concerning health projects, the lack of exchange of views and strategy in health care among EU and the difficulties related to the calls for tenders.
After a short introduction defining the role of industry in the development of modern healthcare and the acknowledgement of the role of structural funds in healthcare, I overviewed the successful steps already accomplished:
Then, I outlined the problems that the EC and governments are facing in funding eHealth:
• Strategic :
–Many Health projects are lacking vision and coordination
• Procurement issues:
–Procurement procedures are too lengthy (up to 4 years!)
–The transparency is not always ensured (tender published in local language)
–Criteria of selection are too restrictive and too technical
–Release of pre-financing is too lengthy (9 to 18 months in some cases)
–Support for building proposals is not always provided or/and advertised and known
–The countries are lacking best practice repository and guidance
I also outlined the importance of the following elements for a successful eHealth project (from eHealth is worth it study):
1. Commitment and involvement of all stakeholders;
2. Strong health policy and clinical leadership that guides a flexible and regularly reviewed eHealth strategy;
3. Regular assessment of costs, incentives and benefits for all stakeholders;
4. Organisational changes in clinical and working practices;
5. Strong clinical leadership, good organisational change management, multi-disciplinary teams with a well-grounded experience in ICT and clear incentives;
6. Long term perspective, endurance and patience.
As a conclusion, I presented the COCIR recommendations, that can be summarized:
1. Integrated approach needed from EC (coordination and coherence between DG SANCO, DG Digital Agenda, DG REGIO and MSs)
2. Continue to invest in health projects, recognizing increasing demand of chronic disease and ageing
3. Pay particular attention to training and education of health providers/users and change management programs
4. Increase transparency of public tender (translate national tenders and submit them to public consultation on EU portal)
5. Facilitate access to public tenders (foresee budget for building tenders and reduce the part of co-financing for the Member States)
6. Control the time to pre-financing (limiting the time to 45 days)
7. Provide functional specifications in Health tenders and quality criteria by type of tender (e.g. infrastructure, EHR, ePrescribing)
8. Avoid national/regional detailed technical tenders that risk to be obsolete due to the pace of innovation in technology and could favour specific providers
9. Increase EU scrutiny of major implementations
10. Simplify the application process for eligible beneficiaries
We hope that this will be an on-going cooperation with the Committee of the Regions' Technical Platform allowing governing bodies to benefit from industry experience as a stakeholder implicated constantly in eHealth implementation.
Dr Octavian Purcarea
Director – Industry Market Development Europe
World Wide Health Team