The second Phase of the European Pre-Commercial Public Procurement process of the ROSIA project has started with three awarded contractors.

• • • Pre-commercial public procurement is a phased R&D competition in which several public administrations define a common need not covered by the market.
    • ROSIA aims to unlock the telerehabilitation market through the development of an innovation ecosystem that enables the integration of public health services with patient self-care and self-management tools and community services.
    • Phase 1 aimed at the detailed design of the solution, phase 2 will consist of the development of the prototype and phase 3 the validation of the complete solution. The total funding is €3.9M.

Zaragoza, 26 June 2023. ROSIA has successfully awarded the second phase of the research competition for the development of three prototypes which will be co-created with the three buyers’ organisations.

Project ROSIA PCP was launched in January 2021 and involves 12 partners across 5 countries. The project’s three public procurers are: Servicio Aragonés de Salud in Spain, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra in Portugal, and the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Ireland.

The project is coordinated by IACS (Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud) and supported by eight other entities with complementary profiles: VALDE (Spain), Instituto Pedro Nunes (Portugal), The International Foundation for Integrated Care (The Netherlands), The Decision Group (The Netherlands), Instituto para la Experiencia del Paciente (Spain), PPCN.xyz Aps (Denmark) and the Municipalities Penela and Soure in Portugal.

The potential of tele-rehabilitation in improving the quality of healthcare services is well recognised and substantiated. However, barriers to its adoption remain unresolved. ROSIA aims to develop solutions to overcome these barriers.

The results obtained and the lessons learned during the ROSIA project execution will help the deployment of a telerehabilitation solutions platform, easily integrated into any health service in Europe. The applications and devices of the ROSIA Catalogue will be connected to this platform, allowing the integration of community and supervised self-care services into the care plan of each patient. The ROSIA 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.

The awarded contractors are:

PROHAB is the proposal of a Spanish consortium led by the Research Center Fundació EURECAT in cooperation with the SME Doole Health and the Research Institute Germans Trias i Pujol. The PROHAB solution offers a dual-system-based approach. On one side, a patient management center to all the involved professionals, following an integrated-care approach and incorporating a system to support decision-making. On the other hand, a patient with rehabilitation needs will benefit from an application that promotes self-management, behavioral change, and better follow-up. PROHAB will be ready for integration with third-party solutions and devices thanks to an open portal that enables and supports a unique access point for prescription of remote rehabilitation solutions.

RAISE will be developed by an international consortium led by the Greek Research Institute ETHNIKO and including the Spanish partners Televés, a large company, and the Research Institute Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia, the Greek University Panepistimio Ioanninon and Vidavo, a SME, and the Portuguese Research institute INESCTEC.RAISE initiates an innovative set of tools for an integrated patient tele-rehabilitation pathway, whose main pillars are: an open platform available to patients, their informal caregivers and healthcare professionals, integrating the design of the Shared Care Plan (SCP), prescription recommendation, and social collaboration for the tele-rehabilitation period; a catalogue of devices, services and tools empowering and educating patients towards self- management; and a developers’ layer on which the solutions will be built.

REHABILITA+ will be developed by the Spanish large company GMV. Rehabilita+ will be an Open Platform to provide rehabilitation services to the healthcare providers under proper regulatory and standards compliance frameworks. The openness of the platform will enable solutions providers to faster develop high-quality solutions and populate a catalogue with apps and solutions for telerehabilitation. Solution providers will be able to easily focus on adding actual value to their apps or platforms built on top of Rehabilita+ and speeding up the creation of new solutions with high impact in telerehabilitation.

The second phase of the competition will last ten months, with a maximum budget for the second tender of €300,000 VAT included per contractor to develop the prototype of their solution. During this period, a team made up of representatives of the three purchasers will closely follow the evolution, co-creating the solution with the contractors for the alignment of their proposals with the shared needs of the purchasers.

To access the next phase, these contractors will have to go through a new evaluation of their results, in which only two of the contractors will be selected and will have a budget of €1,450,000 (including 21% VAT) each, to be carried out between March-2024 and May-2025.

ROSIA Team

Zaragoza, 15 July 2022.– H2020 co-funded PCP (Pre-Commercial Procurement) project ROSIA PCP has closed its call for tender with a promising total of 10 bids received. The call remained open from March 31st until June 30th on the Spanish Public Procurement Platform, where the award report will be published on September 29th.

The formal tender-opening session (Administrative and Technical envelopes) was held confidentially on July 1st. After studying the proposals, confirming that all requirements were met, and clarifying any ambiguities, the total number of 10 bids was formally announced.

Many of the bids were submitted by consortia formed by an international set of companies. Given the broad scope of the ROSIA’s tender, this is another promising sign.

The bids will be evaluated during July and August, and on September 9th the Financial envelopes will be opened in an session to which all non-excluded bidders will be invited. The list of awarded proposals will then be published on September 29th, and the signature of contracts for phase 1 will take place on October 19th.

Following the PCP process, the five awarded consortia in the tender will compete during the design phase of the solution (Phase 1) and the three solutions receiving the highest evaluations by the technical committee will move on to the prototyping phase (Phase 2). Finally, only two prototypes will be selected to enter the pilot phase (Phase 3).

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.