A new framework agreement will make it easier for all hospitals in South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority to implement new digital solutions for patient follow-up at home. EG CheckWare became the first supplier under the framework agreement to win a mini-competition organized by Vestre Viken HF.
Vestre Viken, which provides hospital and specialist health services to around 500,000 people in 22 municipalities in South-Eastern Norway, wants to focus on patient empowerment. They aim to facilitate that as many patients as possible can be offered digital home follow-up.
– We want our patients to only have to come physically to the hospital when they actually need to. Hence the service "patient-managed outpatient clinic," where Vestre Viken is leading the way in our region together with CheckWare. We look forward to what’s coming next, on behalf of both the patients and the hospital’s healthcare staff.
Says Rune Simensen, Director of Technology and eHealth at South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority.
In February, Helse Sør-Øst entered into a framework agreement with six suppliers, including EG CheckWare. The agreement aims to facilitate sharing innovative solutions for digital home monitoring between hospitals in the region and to jointly plan new solutions. The agreement has a duration of two years, with the possibility of a two-year extension.
– We are very pleased to have established this framework agreement. It will make it easier, faster, and more cost-effective for hospitals to adopt new digital solutions that can both ease the daily work of employees and strengthen patient care, Simensen stated to the organization's own website in February.
Vestre Viken was the first entity in the region to conduct a mini-competition within the framework agreement. They wanted a solution that ensures effective and good follow-up of their patients outside the hospital through, among other things, digital messages, sharing information via rights-restricted and self-developed electronic forms, collecting measurement data, and using a digital self-management plan. The goal is to facilitate user-controlled follow-up, where patients’ own registrations and digital dialogue with the hospital guide follow-up and treatment.
After a competition held before Easter, the entity chose to use the technical solution from EG CheckWare. After evaluating both price and quality of the received offers, EG CheckWare emerged as the best option.
– We have recently established the virtual hospital, and we want to develop services with user-controlled outpatient clinics, explains Lisbeth Sommervoll, who is the CEO of Vestre Viken HF.
– We have a dedicated department for user-driven service development and have great faith in users as catalysts for change. The virtual hospital forms the overarching framework, while form feedback, which among others is provided by CheckWare, allows us to prevent unnecessary appointments for patients. This is an important part of our services aimed at various chronic patient groups, such as epilepsy patients, she says.
Read more about Vestre Viken's virtual hospital.
In the selection process, Vestre Viken has worked closely with Sykehuspartner HF, which is the contracting party on behalf of the region. Both the Department of Research and Innovation, Technology, and the Procurement Department were involved to ensure that all functionality, technical, and security requirements were met.
Within the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, Vestre Viken has taken a leading position in user-controlled home follow-up, not least because they have achieved a significant patient volume.
– Increased user involvement is at the top of our development plan. This is important to us. We have many highly skilled professionals eager to contribute to developing digital home follow-up, which generates a lot of energy for everyone involved, says Sommervoll and elaborates:
– For example, we use technology to sort which visits are necessary, so that days are not filled with routine checks and unnecessary patient attendance. This allows us to accommodate patients on short notice. We monitor these figures over time to document how many appointments we actually save, she says.
Important to understand what the health trusts actually want
Helge T. Blindheim is responsible for South-Eastern Norway at EG CheckWare. He says that a lot of energy is invested in working with service offerings in such competitions.
– We prioritize quality in our solutions and make this visible in our responses. It is important for us to combine a good understanding of the task with a strong solution description and then deliver as the customer expects, he explains.
Blindheim believes that the framework agreement gives the region the opportunity to establish user-controlled outpatient clinics on a large scale.
– Digital home monitoring is an excellent example of how technology can be integrated into the delivery of health services for the benefit of both patients and healthcare professionals. Nothing is better than when good resource utilization at the hospital coincides with the patient's interests, says Blindheim.
– CheckWare aims to be a reliable partner. We believe that quality should come first, and we will do our utmost to make it easy for hospitals to choose us also in the future.
