Good practice:

KotiDigi - Home and Remote Care Service Platform -Innovation Partnership Model in Public Procurement

The procurement of the platform is based on the understanding that it is necessary to provide a wider range of services for the home environment to improve the quality of social and healthcare services of the city, and to increase the customer’s autonomy. The City of Tampere will save millions of euros each year through the integration of several different services on just one platform. According to the innovation partnership model, a public operator does not procure an off-the-shelf solution. Instead, a new solution is created in cooperation with companies. The model makes it possible to develop and test both an integration platform based on open standards and related services, such as centralized monitoring, alarms, device register management, etc. The idea is that once the platform is ready, the customer is not forced to give up a technology with which they are already familiar with. The new platform enables wider adoption of remote monitoring and well-being technologies, and makes it possible to increase the market of the industry on a national level, providing to the involved companies references for the international market.

The project received funding of 100 000€ from the City of Tampere and from the Council of Tampere Region. Business Finland funds the project with 200 000€.

The requirements of the digital home and remote care integration platform were successfully specified in spring 2017 through open definition process. All interested companies were able to contribute to the technical definition process which led to a surprisingly high number of bids and interested companies (total 42). In the first round of tenders of integration platform development, 14 bids were received and six were chosen to continuation. The final decision was made out of 4 tenders.

The challenging part was to write the tender notice following the requirements of Finnish procurement law or the Market Law. After the winning consortium was chosen, the procurement was sued to the Market Court. External help is needed when definition of the technical solution is created.

Open communication between the public authority and the private sector throughout the innovation partnership process is the priority number one. All partners that are interested in the process are given a chance to contribute.

There are more phases in innovation partnership method than in normal public procurement process. There might also be more tenders coming in than in traditional public procurement process. Therefore management and running of the process demands a lot of work.

Although there may be a chance to end up in the Market Court, the challenges and services that require digital solutions will gain from the innovation partnership since the process will reveal more innovative approaches than the traditional public procurement process.