ROSIA aims to provide access to public health services to a suite of disruptive innovations in the telerehabilitation market through an open platform and an innovation ecosystem.

The platform and ecosystem will be designed to invite and support third party innovative solutions in tele-rehabilitation, while at the same time be accessible to health care professionals, facilitating the medical prescription of these solutions.
The project is led by the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de La Salud (IACS), and includes public procurers el Servicio Aragonés de Salud (Spain), National Rehabilitation Hospital (Ireland) and University Hospital of Coimbra (Portugal).
Companies wishing to bid have until 30 June 2022.

If you are planning to bid and have any doubts about the scope or requirements of the tender, or about the PCP process, we have developed a workshop just for you.

Please feel free to register and join us at ZOOM 

ROSIA Team

Explanatory workshop on ROSIA-PCP

Zaragoza, 31 March 2022. The call for tenders for Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project ROSIA (Remote Rehabilitation for Isolated Areas) opened 31 March 2022. The project is co-funded by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme and uses a PCP instrument to procure the R&D services required by its buyers group –  Servicio Aragonés de Salud (Spain), National Rehabilitation Hospital (Ireland) and Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra (Portugal). A PCP promotes co-creation and competitiveness among international industry to provide R&D not yet available in the market.

The R&D required by the members of ROSIA’s buyers group is for the development of an innovation ecosystem that can support innovative solutions towards implementing telerehabilitation services that integrate professionals, patients and devices. The project is led by the Aragon Health Sciences Institute (IACS), who execute the joint procurement on behalf of the buyers group.

Companies wishing to bid have until 30 June 2022 to submit their bids. Due to the broad scope of the call’s requirements, bidders will need to create consortia and bid jointly. There is a matchmaking tool available for this purpose on the project’s website.

The opening of envelopes is scheduled for 1 July and the final award for 19 October. Bidding consortia will enter a first competitive phase of design proposing an ecosystem model that engages technological, health and community trends. This phase will run from October 2022 to February 2023 and up to 5 successful bidders will be selected to participate in it. The total budget for this phase is €100,000 (including 21% VAT). Only three of these bidders will move on to the development phase, worth €900,000 (including 21% VAT) and to be carried out between March 2023 and January 2024, and only two bidding teams will move on to the subsequent pilot phase and will be able to implement, test and validate their proposal in the public health system, including clinical practice and the incorporation of tele-rehabilitation devices in a real environment. This last phase will last 14 months, between March 2024 and May 2025, and has been allocated €2,900,000 (including 21% VAT). The pilots will be implemented in Somontano and Teruel (Aragon, Spain), Penela and Soure (Coimbra, Portugal) and CHO Areas 6 and 7 (Ireland).

The results obtained and the lessons learned during the project will help the deployment of a platform of solutions for telerehabilitation that may be easily integrated in any health service in Europe. In the future, the applications and devices comprising a ROSIA Catalogue will be connected to this platform, allowing the integration of both community and supervised self-care services into the care plan of each patient. ROSIA’s model of integrated value-based care can also open the door to rethinking new business models and incentives for providers, improve equity in access to rehabilitation resources and contribute to improving the sustainability of these services.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Rosia letter of interest

We are glad to inform you that Departamento de Sanidad de Aragón (Spain), National Rehabilitation University Hospital (Ireland) and Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra (Portugal) are part of the European project ROSIA. The project aims to design future rehabilitation services for remote rural areas, making sure those who live in the least populated areas, furthest from cities, have access to intelligent telerehabilitation services. These designs will take advantage of new technologies. They will integrate social and health services. They will even integrate whatever community resources are available in patients’ villages and towns. But they will be prescribed and supervised by rehabilitation specialists in central healthcare facilities.

We hope that the platform we offer to support the project will validate these new telerehabilitation devices and technologies, so that health professionals may place their trust in them and can include them in their prescriptions.

What do we mean by telerehabilitation?
Today, telerehabilitation is at risk of being dismissed as mere consultations via webcam, but we want to make sure it integrates artificial intelligence, augmented reality, gamified exercises (or video game workouts): anything that will foster remote care and self-care.

How do we kick-start it?
We use a PPI, a public procurement of innovative solutions, an instrument to convoke intelligent solutions to problems citizens face; solutions that the market does not currently provide. It has been used in Europe for a few years now, and it is also sometimes known as pre-commercial procurement.

In a PCP, the state is involved in the co-creation process, together with private bidders, and in competition with them. The process will inspire a good number of new solutions and prototypes and the most interesting among them are going to be implemented and tested with live subjects in those European regions participating in ROSIA (Portugal, Ireland and Spain).

With all this, we hope to accomplish a triple victory: Patients, Healthcare and Entrepreneurship. Patients in rural areas will be empowered; they will be able to work through their rehabilitation programs from home. The healthcare system will be empowered; it will be able to meet its patients’ needs without requiring them to travel long distances. And the European business community will be empowered; it will have a chance to invest in new ideas and, above all, to find a way to market them.

What kinds of solutions are we looking for?
We are thinking of disruptive technologies in the field of rehabilitation incorporating virtual reality, depth cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, etc. But there are also solutions related to integration of social and health services, municipal in most cases, with community resources. A fitness hour in the municipal sports centre, for instance, or a swimming class at the local pool may be included in a patient’s rehabilitation file and followed up by the rehabilitation specialist at the central healthcare facility. Still other solutions may be more closely related to motivating the individual to carry out prescribed exercises and programs at home.

What kinds of companies are we looking for?

• • Companies developing technological solutions that could be useful in telerehabilitation.
  • Companies that provide open platforms able to support these kinds of services.
  • Companies that manage community services related to telerehabilitation.
  • Companies that monitor engagement and motivation.

How can you get involved in this first phase of the project?
Both to broadcast the opportunities ROSIA offers as a project, and to get to understand the market’s attitudes towards it, ROSIA partners are setting up an Open Market Consultation (OMC), where companies interested in contributing solutions to the project will be given a chance to present their ideas.

The OMC is going to be launched 12 July and four online events, organised, respectively, by the buyers in this project (Salud Aragón, National Rehabilitation Hospital of Ireland, and Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Coimbra).

Registration for speakers closes five days before launch day, and can be done following this link.

Once you register, you will receive all the information you need regarding setting up your presentation (depending on the number of presenters, speakers will have between 5 and 10 minutes for their presentation). All events will take place on the second half of June.