eDEMAP

Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) has become a strategic action for the Regional Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs of Andalusia, which has developed the Andalusian Public Procurement for Innovation in Health Programme and has created the Public Procurement of Innovation Office Technical (PPI-OT).

The Office is developing the Early Demand Map (EDM) of the Andalusian Public Health System (APHS): an innovative methodology with a holistic approach to carry out the identification, evaluation and prioritisation of innovation needs in the APHS in order to develop and implement PPI projects based on real and demand-driven needs, which are not currently covered by the market.

Its objectives are i) to identify the portfolio of needs in a systematized, dynamic and adaptable way, ii) to integrate all key agents, iii) to design support tools for the capture and identification of new needs, iv) to design a methodology for the prioritisation, evaluation and approval of needs/challenges, and v) to manage the portfolio of needs and its orientation to PPI funding calls for proposals. Once the needs are properly evaluated and turned into challenges, the managers of the Office will look for funding through regional, national and international calls.

Up to now, needs are compiled in a static and reactive way; that can get obsolete and difficult to adapt to possible changes in needs; and based on solutions to problems rather than on real needs. The more direct consequence of it is the delay on the implementation of possible PPI projects.

Therefore, a bad identification of needs has an important economic impact (waste or misuse of the resources, directly affecting the cost and sustainability of the APHS); social (an obsolete system incapable of providing the best and the most updated services and treatments to citizens), and environmental (a digitalisation process would reduce the environmental footprint of the actual system of needs compilation trough on-site workshops).

The main motivation to solve the problem is to improve the APHS services to the citizens of Andalusia through the implementation of PPI projects as a result of the digitalisation of the EDM.

This is how the process is developed:

• OPEN WORKSHOPS – needs identification: Needs are collected through workshops organised and managed by the Office. There are two different types of workshops: OPEN workshop and MIND workshop. The OPEN one is attended by 40 professionals of the APHS, who discuss about the health needs that are not currently solved by any market solution.
• 1st DESCRIPTION OF NEEDS: Following the current system, a first amount of data is collected during the workshop, and the rest is collected afterwards in a bidirectional way between the Office project managers and the APHS professionals who attended the workshops and lead the needs/challenges identified.
• MIND WORKSHOPS – external analysis: approximately one month after the OPEN workshop, the Office organise the MIND workshop, which is attended by 30 professionals from SMEs, companies, research centres, universities and patient´s associations,
• Transforming NEEDS into CHALLENGES: first of all, the participants of the MIND workshop help to define innovation in order to transform it into challenges. Even though this transformation from needs into challenges is done after the workshops, between the needs leaders or proposers (from the healthcare system) and the innovation procurement Office´s managers, the process is enriched thanks to the inputs from the professionals who participate in the MIND workshop.
• EVALUATION AND PRIORITISATION: the challenges defined after the workshops between the needs/challenges leaders and the managers are sent by email to an Evaluation Committee that will evaluate the different challenge proposals for both OPEN and MIND workshops in accordance with an established and approved evaluation system. Once they are evaluated, the Committee will prioritise them and the Office will then start the searching for funding opportunities.

In principle, the information collected of the different challenges are: contact data, need description and justification, state of the art, objectives, users, strategic alignment and relevance, level of innovation, TRL, phases, technical viability, resources, risks, economic viability, budget, sustainability, impact, industrial and intellectual property rights, replicability and internationalisation.

Therefore, the whole process currently starts and is mainly developed through the physical workshops, no digital solution is being used to tackle the challenge.

There are several features on our demand:

• Feedback feature to the management team, such as graphics which summarise how the process is being developed.
• The evaluation system is already settled, but it requires a peer review by evaluators.
• After collection and evaluation, there will be a panel of funding calls, which will ideally guide possible funding ways.

The current platforms that could meet some of these requirements are much more focused on accelerator programmes competitions or awards for companies rather than on public organisations interested in compiling ideas/needs/challenges from its professionals, that will eventually be turned into challenges and matched with possible calls for PPI projects funding.

In this context, the challenge here is the co-creation of a tool that allows the digitalisation and complete systematisation of the EDM.

The Office will send to the potential users of the solution (professionals of the healthcare system that submit their innovation needs and experts’ evaluators) specific surveys in order to check if the solution is fulfilling their expectations. They will also collect the opinion from colleagues and from the Observing Challengers.

Applications closed on the 24th of January 2024 at 17:00 CET.