The fast growing ageing population in Europe is bringing new demand-side pressures on public health and care providers. These pressures undermine the long-term sustainability of existing models of delivering care services to the ageing population.

The challenge is to scale up innovative solutions, which have been tested and have demonstrated success in smaller scale settings and that have not yet been deployed on a large scale, by contributing to collaborative efforts in public purchasing of innovative ICT-based solutions for active and healthy ageing. These include inter alia integrated care and active ageing solutions, independent living solutions and telecare, support for self-care and person-centred care. Moreover, take-up of these ICT-based solutions by both public care providers as well as people in need for care is a crucial factor in successfully alleviating the demand-side pressures on public health and care provision.

This topic will contribute to the Scaling-Up Strategy^[1] of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing and to boosting the Silver Economy and Digital Single Market in Europe. The actions supported will target deployment of active and healthy ageing solutions at large scale across different regions in Europe.

In line with the priority actions of the Scaling-up Strategy, the scope of the PPI pilot(s) is to specify, purchase and deploy ICT based solutions for active and healthy ageing which can deliver sustainable, new or improved services in which public procurement approaches for innovative solutions are successfully applied.

Proposals should:

• Be driven by clearly identified procurement needs of the participating organisations and building on a complete understanding of the needs of the ageing population, as well as the needs of the relevant health and care providers;
• Support sustainable deployment of new or improved services by providers involved in the procurement of solutions for active and healthy ageing;
• Contribute to the creation of scalable markets across Europe in innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing;
• Specify measures that will ensure the sustainability of solutions beyond the lifespan of the proposed project;
• Engage public and/or private procurers from each country participating (at national, regional or local level) that have responsibilities and budget control in the relevant area of care or supply of services;
• Be based on a complete set of common specifications for end to end services;
• Demonstrate that the implementation phase will reach "large scale" (i.e. sufficient scale to achieve statistical significance) through region-wide deployment across multiple regions of Europe;
• Contribute to the use of interoperable solutions based on open platforms and take into account existing best practices and standardisation initiatives;
• Provide robust safeguards to ensure compliance with ethical standards and privacy protections and take account of the gender dimension;
• Contribute good practices to be made available for replication across other regions (e.g. "detailed plans" for larger scale sustainable uptake of innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing, reference material and guidelines, manuals and education materials).

The European Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 and 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately through PPI. This does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Growing awareness and successful use of public procurement to boost ICT innovation applied to active and healthy ageing, ultimately benefiting the growing ageing population across Europe;
• Contribution with data and experiences to regulatory and legislative process development addressing potential barriers to procurement of innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing;
• Contribution of an open and comprehensive socio-economic evidence base for ICT investments in the field that can support the development of sustainable business models (e.g. cost-benefit analysis, increased efficiency of health and care systems, impact assessments, return on investments, quality of life improvements for users, ethics, safety gain and user satisfaction);
• Support initiatives on interoperability and standardisation that can contribute to defragmentation of the market for ICT based active and healthy ageing solutions;
• Creation of economic boundary conditions that can support long-term sustainability of health and care systems and emergence of new business models to develop ICT innovation for active and healthy ageing in Europe;
• Support forward-looking, concerted public-sector investment strategies that benefit from joint approaches across different regions;
• Create new opportunities for market uptake and economies of scale for the supply side for ICT based solutions and services for active and healthy ageing in a Digital Single Market for Europe.
• Contribute to inform policy measures that foster the take-up of ICT solutions for active and healthy ageing.

[1]European Scaling-up Strategy in Active and Healthy Ageing: https://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/active-healthy-ageing/scaling_up_strategy.pdf