A recent framework agreement will make it easier for all the hospitals in the South East health region in Norway to adopt new, digital solutions for follow-up of patients in their own homes. CheckWare became the first supplier within the framework agreement to win a mini-competition run by Vestre Viken health trust.
Vestre Viken, which supplies hospital and specialist healthcare services to around 500,000 people in 22 municipalities in Health South-East, wants to focus on user driven outpatient care. They want to enable as many patients as possible to be offered digital follow-up at home.
- We want our patients to only need to come physically to the hospital when they actually need it. Hence the concept of "user-controlled outpatient care", where Vestre Viken takes the lead in our region together with CheckWare. We look forward to the continuation here, both on behalf of the patients and the healthcare staff at the hospital, says Rune Simensen, director of technology and e-health at Health South East.
In February, Health South East entered into a framework agreement with six suppliers, including CheckWare. The agreement will make it easier to share innovative solutions for digital home monitoring and outpatient care between hospitals in the region and plan new solutions together. The agreement has a duration of two years, with the possibility of a two-year extension.
- We are very pleased to this framework agreement in place. It will make it easier, faster and less expensive for hospitals to adopt new digital solutions that can both facilitate employees' everyday work and strengthen patient treatment, Simensen told on their own website in February.
You can read more about the framework agreement here: https://helse-sorost.no/nyheter/styrker-arbeit-med-digital-hjemmeoppfolging (In Norwegian).
Digital solution for copyrighted measures
Vestre Viken was the first hospital trust in the region to conduct a mini-competition within the framework agreement. They wanted a solution that ensures efficient and good follow-up of their patients outside the hospital through, among other things, digital messages, sharing of information through proprietary and self-developed electronic forms, collection of measurement data and use of a digital self-treatment plan. The aim is to facilitate user-driven follow-up, where the patients' own registrations and digital dialogue with the hospital govern follow-up and treatment.
After the competition, which was held before Easter, the company chose to use the technical solution from CheckWare. After an assessment of both price and quality of the offers received, CheckWare came out on top.
- We have recently established the virtual hospital, and we want to develop health services with user-driven outpatient clinics, explains Lisbeth Sommervoll, who is the managing director at Vestre Viken HF.
- We have a separate department for user-driven health service development, and have great faith in users as a catalyst for change. The virtual hospital forms the superstructure, while measure and questionnaire feedback, which CheckWare provides among other things, means that we can prevent unnecessary attendances for the patients. It is an important part of our services aimed at different groups of chronic patients, such as epilepsy patients, she says.
Read more about Vestre Viken's virtual hospital here: https://vestreviken.no/behandlinger/vestre-vikens-virtuelle-sykehus (In Norwegian).
In the selection process, Vestre Viken has had close cooperation with Sykehuspartner HF, which is the contracting party on behalf of the region. Both the Department for Research and Innovation, Technology and the Purchasing Department were involved to ensure that all functionality, technical and safety requirements were met.
Within the Health South-East region, Vestre Viken has gained a leading position in user-driven outpatient care and monitoring, not least because they have achieved a significant amount of patient volume.
- Increased user participation is at the top of our development plan. This is important to us. We have many very good professionals who want to be involved in developing digital outpatient care, it gives a lot of energy for everyone involved, says Sommervoll and elaborates:
- For example, we use the technology to sort which visits are necessary, so that the days are not filled with routine checks and unnecessary patient attendance. This means that we can accept patients at short notice. We monitor these figures over time, so that we can document how many checks we actually save, she says.
Here you can read more about the mini-competition: https://vestreviken.no/om-oss/nyheter/bedre-hjemmeoppfolging (In Norwegian).
Important to understand what the health care organisations actually want
Helge T. Blindheim is responsible for Health South-East in CheckWare. He says that a lot of energy is put into the work with offers 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-driven outpatient clinics on a large scale.
- Digital outpatient clinics is an excellent example of how technology can be integrated into the provision of healthcare services for the benefit of both the patient and the healthcare staff. Nothing is better than when good use of resources at the hospital coincides with the patient's interests, says Blindheim.
- CheckWare must be a predictable partner. We believe that quality should come first, and will do our utmost to make it easy for hospitals to choose us in the future as well.