7 December 2020
The Portuguese Competence Centre for Innovation Procurement ANI, in partnership with IMPIC, organised the e-learning session "Public Procurement for Innovation (PPI) in Health", aimed at Hospital Administrators, as part of the 8th APAH Value Conference, organised by the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators.
The 8th APAH Value Conference, which took place between 19 and 23 October 2020, had as its motto "Innovate and lead in uncertainty" in a context of changes and challenges for the future arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme of the event offered a wide range of content - online training formats, thematic plenary sessions, innovative solution sharing sessions, awards and public presentations of APAH books - with the presence of ANI and IMPIC on the first day.
The CPI training session took place on 19 October and, for 3 hours, Luís Ferreira, representing ANI, and Fernando Batista, representing IMPIC, intended to raise hospital administrators' awareness of innovation public procurement in order to facilitate the understanding of key aspects of its implementation.
Administrators, hospital managers, directors and heads of procurement services and research and innovation centres of health organisations were the audience of this initiative to raise awareness about PPI, something which Luís Ferreira characterises as "a very relevant experience for adapting content to one of the public sectors where the issue could have the greatest impact". The ANI representative also recalls that the pandemic has posed "tremendous challenges to hospital units in the day-to-day management and planning that needs to be done in the short and medium term", and is therefore "a particularly fertile time in new unmet needs, many of which induce innovation". Fernando Batista of IMPIC adds that, at this moment, "any instrument that serves as leverage for the economy assumes extreme importance" and, as such, "public procurement in the post-Pandemic Era will assume a very important role".
The e-learning session also aimed at promoting more transparent public procurement, referred to by Fernando Batista as "a principle that must be constantly nurtured, since only through it can the much desired accountability of the contractual activity be fulfilled", also emphasising "the efficiency of public funds used in public procurement" as a prerequisite for the modernisation "namely of health units".
In the context of these initiatives, entities such as ANI and IMPIC are responsible for stimulating "the main agents of change to reflect on the use of the purchasing function in a more strategic way and to find more innovative solutions that lead to efficiency gains and service improvements".
The thirty or so participants acted as a trial audience for upcoming approaches on a subject for which there is still a lack of capacity and information from many actors. Both entities make a very positive assessment of the action, recognizing the willingness of professionals to "improve the efficiency of the services provided through innovation operated by a public contract.
Innovation plays a crucial role in obtaining new solutions that seek to improve the quality and excellence of health services in Portugal. Addressing the issue of CPI allows to encourage the process of public procurement of innovation directly in the decision-making bodies and main agents of change in the improvement and modernisation of services
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