The region of Catalonia has launched today a Request for Information (RFI) with the purpose to obtain technical information on the possibilities of supplying the elements of a technological platform for the development of the Electronic Health Record of Catalonia. Given the technical complexity of the technological platform for the development of the Electronic Health Record and the need to finish defining its design and the components of the platform to be tendered, as well as to inform the economic operators active in the market of the need that has arisen, we proceed to carry out a preliminary market consultation, in accordance with Article 115 of Law 9/2017, of November 8, on public sector contracts (LCSP) by which the Directives of the European Parliament and of the Council 2014 23 / EU and 201424 / of 26 February 2014 are transposed to the Spanish legal system.
With roughly 7.7 million inhabitants, the region of Catalonia has been considered a forerunner of digital health adoption in Europe. Since 2009, a robust information exchange deployment has allowed health care providers within the public health system to share clinical information (Shared Electronic Health Record in Catalonia).
Our rationale is that health systems around the world face a number of challenges that are common and that are somehow transforming a discipline as traditional as medicine. Demographic change, patient-centered care, urbanization, the shift from reactive to proactive medicine, and the challenges associated with personalized medicine are some examples of the macro-trends that are affecting health systems on a global scale.
In order to face these challenges and in turn accompany a model of health that is considered of excellence, the Health System of Catalonia began a period of strategic reflection in the field of digital transformation there in 2017. This process ended with the publication of the Digital Health Strategy of Catalonia in 2018 (The Digital Health Strategy for Catalonia). The proposed strategic framework consists of 15 lines of action that aim to turn the current health system upside down through digitalisation. If one had to define the main characteristic of this plan would be: “data-centric” (New Catalonian Digital Health Strategy: a presentation).
At the heart of the proposed model is the Electronic Health Record of Catalonia. A functional and technical platform of new construction that must have a longitudinal vision of the life cycle of an individual and all their contacts with the health system, thus overcoming the classic barriers of separation between health levels (and social services). Today’s information systems pose a barrier to the systematic use of health data, with semantic interoperability being probably the biggest problem. The inconsistency in the definitions of the clinical information models and their technical representation in the persistence models has led Catalonia to decide to base this new electronic health record on the open and international standard openEHR (Catalonia’s new EHR will be built on openEHR).
Linked to the previous, proposers may find all tendering documentation in the Public Procurement Portal of the Catalan Government (documentation is available in Catalonian, Spanish and English): RFI at the Catalonian Public Procurement Portal
The deadline for presenting submissions is the 30th of September 2021.
The proposals and doubts about the RFI must be forwarded to the following email: cpm.ctti@gencat.cat
Thank you so much for sharing this information with anyone who may be interested.
