Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2022-09-05
Buyer: Region Västerbotten (RVB)
Country: SE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 32441100 | 32441300 | 33195000 | 48000000 | 48211000
Estimated value: 4650000 EUR
Submission deadline: 2022-10-31
Award criteria: The most economic tender
EU fund: Horizon Europe

Technical requirements: This PCP is carried out by RVB, appointed as lead procurer to coordinate and lead the PCP in the name and on behalf of buyers group listed in I.1. The applicable national procurement law is Swedish.
Pre-Commercial Procurement of R&D (Research and Development) Services to develop and ICT enabled comprehensive treatment of chronic patients in rural areas (CRANE)
The procurement aims to trigger new solutions to be developed and tested to address the following challenge: facilitate effective, efficient, and user-friendly data driven services to enable self-care of chronic conditions for European rural population. The main technical challenges to be addressed are: striking the right balance between privacy and data protection, and the use of data for data driven services, getting most that IoMT, AI, sensors and other technologies could bring to self-care. GDPR is the cornerstone in CRANE using trust enabling and privacy preserving technologies. CRANE will provide services to patients, clinicians, and carers, such as monitoring, follow-up, motivation, education, training, communication.
The procurement will take the form of a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) under which R&D service contracts will be awarded to a number of R&D providers in parallel in a phased approach. This will make it possible to compare competing alternative solutions.
- R&D up to original development, verification and testing of a limited set of first products or services.
After each phase, intermediate evaluations will be carried out to progressively select the best of the competing solutions. The contractors with the best-value-for-money solutions will be offered a specific contract for the next phase.
This testing may also serve as a first customer test reference for the contractors. The procurement is expected to start in 31st August 2022 and end in 31st March 2026.
The selected operators will retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (IPRs) that they generate during the PCP and will be able to use them to exploit the full market potential of the developed solutions i.e. beyond the procurers. 70% to 80% of all healthcare costs in the EU - an estimated €700 billion - are currently spent 4 / 5 on chronic diseases.
In Phase 1, five contractors apply their solution design approach for the CRANE Challenge. The design level is schematic; planning and calculations are preliminary. During this phase, contractors and procurers will interact in a co-design and co-creation process where doubts and decisions will be agreed-upon. This phase aims to verify the conceptual, technological, organisational, regulatory, safety and budgetary feasibility of the solutions.
In Phase 2, three contractors refine and increase the level of detail of their designs and develop a prototype. The design level is as detailed as possible and calculations should be final. The use of the Co-Design procedure should be intensified. This phase aims to turn the schematic design to a prototype preparing all parties involved for rapid validation and implementation; and to give future users the opportunity to test the solution.
In Phase 3, two contractors implement their solution to be verified by Buyer Regions in the selected Pilot Sites in each country of the 3 Buyers. The solutions are installed, integrated, made operational, maintained and performance data collected.
This procurement receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreement No 965277 — CRANE PCP (https://crane-pcp.eu/). The EU has given a grant for this procurement, but is not participating as a contracting authority in the procurement. All communications and offers will be done in English.
Tenders are opened in the procurement system eAvrop by at least one person appointed by Region Västerbotten. Opening minutes will be drawn up.
Participation in the open market consultation that was held as part of the preparation for this procurement is not a prerequisite for submitting a tender.
This procurement is exempted from the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), the EU public procurement directives and the national laws that implement them. This is because it concerns the procurement of R&D services where the benefits do not accrue exclusively to the contracting authority for its use in the conduct of its own affairs.

Eligibility requirements: Selection Criteria as stated in the Tender Documents.

Award value: 4650000