interviews

Framework for independence

Dorothy Cowie, director of Scotland Excel, talks to NHE about an innovative new framework to provide standardised telecare across Scotland.

The national procurement organisation for local government in Scotland has developed a new framework to improve standardisation across the purchasing of telecare services.

The greater use of telecare will enable older people, those with disabilities or mental health disorders to live as independently as possible in their own homes for as long as possible.

All 32 Scottish councils and two of the country’s largest housing associations have confirmed they will use the contract; Scotland Excel’s director, Dorothy Cowie, discussed the value of the wide-ranging framework with NHE, and how it could be used as inspiration for other procurement projects.

She said: “The framework came about because we were already working with a group of stakeholders in the social care arena who had identified the need to have improved resourcing of telecare.”

Six suppliers have won places: Chubb Systems, ICare, Jontek, Possum, Tunstall Healthcare and Tynetec. The contract will be open initially until the end of December 2013, but could be extended by a further year.

The forecast aggregate spend for participating local authorities is about £3.4m a year, equating to £10.2m over the term of the framework, including the extension period. Scotland Excel said that a price comparison exercise showed annual savings achieved through the framework across local authorities will range between just below 1% up to 15.4%. The average saving will be 8.8%.

Scotland-specific

When investigating opportunities for a collaborative framework that could be used by multiple partners and customers such as local authorities, Scotland Excel identified an existing English framework that could be used or adapted for their needs, but decided to develop a new contract instead.

Cowie explained: “The reason for that was because some of the opportunities that had been identified by the telecare steering group were to do with interoperability of the products and also the need to embed innovation; the opportunity for actual user consultation to shape how products looked in the future. We felt that we wanted to bed this in and make them part of the criteria on which suppliers would be evaluated.”

Adapting the existing English contract to include these factors was not possible, so the group worked to form a new framework tailored to providing these opportunities for Scotland.

Inter-operability

In terms of benefits, Cowie believed that improving interoperability will allow a wider choice and greater involvement and consultation with service users to develop improved telecare.

She said: “Interoperability is a really big thing. In the research we’ve found that lots of providers have very good products, but they don’t all operate over the same communication protocols. This meant that you were limited in choice, if you’d chosen a base unit from a supplier; it meant all your peripherals also had to come from that supplier. But for your particular needs as an end user, it could be that there was a better product from another supplier, it just didn’t work with your base unit. So it will open up choice for end users.

“All the suppliers in the framework are committed to working directly with users to influence future product development, so it should be very helpful from their point of view.”

One supplier has also agreed to make their products conform to the agreement of the BS 8521 protocol, which provides an immediate impact on choice. As new products come online, this could be implemented by other suppliers.

To ensure the framework continues to drive improvements in telecare procurement, a continued steering group has been set up to monitor the contract and make sure “the right things are happening”, Cowie added.

Model savings

The framework could provide other organisations with a model for setting up similar contracts, with the potential to achieve further savings and standardisation for social and healthcare procurement.

“We hope that if other people or organisations are setting up a collaborative framework and they see that it is possible to begin addressing things like interoperability, and that suppliers themselves are now seeing how working together to provide services is ultimately going to be beneficial for their customers and end users,” Cowie said. “Hopefully it’s started to break down some of the barriers by thinking about the end users needs and requirements, and will be beneficial for more people in the future.”

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