Background and policy context

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a need for coordination and cooperation at EU, national, regional and even local level in the health sector. The pandemic has exacerbated the existing weaknesses along the supply chain, including related Member States’ public procurement.

New approaches are needed to improve resilience of the healthcare systems in order to increase preparedness for future public health emergencies. They should include concrete actions aiming at making public procurement more efficient and more resilient. Given the different organisations of the healthcare systems and Member States’ capacity, drawing up general guidelines does not seem the appropriate approach, relevant national/regional stakeholders are better placed to provide the support needed in assessing the needs and provide recommendations to draw up new strategies. This action will contribute to address vulnerabilities within the Union related to procurement, stockpiling and distribution of medical countermeasures as outlined in the HERA mission.

This action supports the policy priority to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and implements the EU4Health Programme’s general objective of protecting people in the Union from serious cross-border threats to health (Article 3, point (b)) through the specific objectives defined in Article 4, points (a) and (b), of Regulation (EU) 2021/522.

Objectives pursued

The proposed action supports Member States in organising a thorough assessment of public procurement in the health sector at national and/or regional level by way of collective intelligence.

Description of the activities to be funded under this topic

This assessment should be organised by relevant national/regional stakeholders that will involve interested Member States’ authorities. The assessment will be organised in working themes that will facilitate exchanges and will collect and analyse the information and data provided. Working sessions and conferences will be organised in Member States that require this support in the preparation of the national or regional procurement strategy. A European conference will be organised in order to inform Member States on the recommendations provided, including on good practices and will encourage further exchange of experience.

Specific mandatory deliverables and/or milestones

A high coverage of MS is encouraged in the proposal, noting that the total budget of the call was established to conduct such work ideally in around 12 Member-States.

Minimum activities that should be covered by the proposal:

Mapping of the public procurement environment in the health sector in the Member States covered by the project including:

- Mapping of purchases made by central purchasing bodies or hospitals, bound by EU public procurement rules. Concretely, a mapping should be made of who is buying what, from whom, and how? This will allow to understand not only the concrete needs public buyers have, but also to set concrete objectives, such as ensuring the security of supply chain, ensuring more innovative and sustainable purchases, etc.-Mapping of all relevant stakeholders involved.

- Mapping to be done in a format that can be easily used for statistics, data gathering, graphics.

Listing of relevant thematic topics to organise the work (preliminary topics should be mentioned in the proposal) and facilitate exchanges, gather opinions and draw lessons learned, on the basis of the above mentioned mapping.

Organisation of brainstorming sessions, dialogues or additional work arrangement on the different thematic topics identified by way of collective intelligence with the involvement of all stakeholders and decision makers. Reports on the assessment of the outcomes of those brainstorming working sessions on each of the thematic topics discussed including a first draft of recommendations and which will form the basis for an overall strategy on public procurement for/by hospitals who are bound by public procurement rules.

New strategies for public procurement in health sector tailored to the needs of the Member State or region concerned as well as an implementation plan based notably on:- Discussion of all recommendations in order to develop up a first draft national/regional strateg(y)ies with the involvement of all stakeholders and decision makers,

- Exchange between the consortia from different awarded projects in order to draw and share lessons learned in and within Member States,

- Discussion and finalisation of draft strategy(ies) at national and/or regional level as well as an implementation plan at national and/or regional level.

Dissemination of the results of the project in a final conference with a European dimension. While preparing the conference, results of the activities carried out under the same call for proposals shall be covered to cross-fertilise results among projects.

During the entire project, selected consortia are encouraged to cooperate with one another. Thereto, it is expected they will include in their proposals the possibility to organize common meetings, for example a kick-off that could be organised by the Commission for all the awarded projects.

Specific action-level indicators for reporting purposes

- Number of stakeholders included in the mapping (i.e. outreach of the activity);

- Number of information products (e.g. data, statistics, graphical representations etc) stemming from the mapping;

- Number of key stakeholders identified by topic (i.e. stakeholders’ mapping);

- Number of events (e.g. brainstorming sessions, dialogues etc.) organized by topic;

- Number of participants to the events by topic and by country;

- Number of stakeholders involved in the reflection on public procurement strategies, by topic, by type (Member States, beneficiaries, health care entities etc) and by country;

- Number of stakeholders endorsing the recommendations/strategies produced, by topic, by type (Member States, beneficiaries, health care entities etc) and by country;

- Number of participants to the project conference by type and by country.

Expected results and impacts

The action is expected to result in the development of new or improved national and regional strategies on public procurement that will make current practices more resilient and efficient all over the Union. This will increase preparedness for future health crises.

The involvement of Member States at national, regional and/or local level as well as of all relevant stakeholders by using collective intelligence methods will also increase coordination and more and better cooperation for the future.