MedTechScan - Horizon scanning of medical technologies for NHS professionals

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done • To improve the identification and tracking of new and emerging medical technologies (devices, diagnostics, digital health tools) in development across the UK. To streamline processes and provide access to the required intelligence to inform horizon scanning agencies' outputs/appraisals • To encourage early engagement of industry with the NHS • To improve NHS planning for introduction and adoption of technologies that offer the most benefit and meet NHS priorities; to reduce investment in products that do not meet NHS priorities or offer evidenced economic or patient care benefits • To reduce duplication and inconsistency in horizon-scanning decision-making by NHS professionals Problem to Be Solved The NHS in England does not have an effective horizon scanning mechanism to identify transformative medical technologies with potential economic and patient care benefits to the health system. The aim would be: 1. To reduce duplication and inconsistency in horizon-scanning decision-making by NHS professionals 2. To reduce money invested by both NHS and manufacturers in products that do not meet NHS priorities or offer evidenced economic or patient care benefits 3. To reduce development of new technologies of limited value Who Are the Users As an authorised user from a horizon-scanning organisation I need a single source of new medical technologies so I can focus on assessing value of technologies, budget-planning and management rather than manually tracking the technologies. As an authorised user from a match manufacturer I need clarity on early engagement with the NHS on new products so that I can plan a product development portfolio and my device will be more likely to be commissioned. As a data inputter I need secure access to a system where I can complete an agreed dataset on products which stores and categorises the information Early Market Engagement The project will be developed jointly with, and is fully supported by the following stakeholders: NHS England; Industry – represented by the Association of British Healthcare Industries and the British In-Vitro Diagnostics Association; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence; National Institute of Health Research Innovation Observatory; Department of Health Office for Life Sciences; Academic Health Science Networks. Each of these stakeholders is represented on an Implementation Group which has developed the business plan and secured project approval and funding. A project consultant based at NICE is working with these agencies to understand the medical technologies horizon scanning landscape and define the initial broad requirements for the service (report due end of June). An early market engagement session was held on 6 June. PowerPoint slides from the event are available at http://labs.nice.org.uk/medtechscan/. Work Already Done Existing Team The supplier will be responsible for the delivery of the work but will have contact with the Digital Services team at NICE who will be responsible for the ongoing hosting and management of the solution following the project completion. Current Phase Not started Work Location Manchester Working Arrangments Virtual working including collaboration/QA with internal NICE Digital Services staff who are based in Manchester. Weekly sprint updates with NICE leads onsite or online. Fortnightly 'show and tells' with key NICE/NICE partner stakeholders to meet governance/assurance needs onsite in Manchester. Representation of a senior lead on NICE governance group twice a month or as required on site in Manchester Security Clearance In addition to the standard contract each individual working on the project will be required to sign a NICE confidentiality agreement and declare any conflicts of interests. Additional T&Cs On delivery of the Phase 1 (Discovery and Alpha) NICE will seek a stop or go decision from its Senior Management Team and funder. Where the decision is to Go, NICE will proceed to Phase 2 under a separate SOW. Where the decision is to STOP, NICE will terminate the agreement subject to clause 23. Subject to clause 23, NICE reserves the right to terminate the agreement if NICE considers it may be able to make efficiency savings by re-procuring Phase 2. Skills & Experience Experience of working within the Healthcare sector. Awareness of where this project fits with the NHS Five Year Forward view and furthers NHS objectives Must be able to start the project from contract award at the beginning of August and deliver Discovery and Alpha phases in a 16 week timeframe from award of contract Experience of undertaking robust user research and complex user journey mapping to deliver a product that achieves desired outcomes and meets user needs Experience of managing high profile stakeholders / end users gather understanding for direction for product development Experience of building a business case to inform project continuation Experience of planning and executing agile projects Experience of providing governance processes including mechanisms for appropriate assurance and quality of delivery Experience of working with commercially sensitive data, demonstrating understanding of data security, confidentiality and integrity Experience in using robust metrics, analytics, search data and user feedback; experience with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics for usage tracking Demonstrable experience of prototyping, testing and iterating with users and stakeholders Experience of developing content strategies and information architectures for new websites and services. Experience writing documentation for systems including setup, configuration and high level architecture and process Experience with C#, MVC, Razor, SQL, IIS, Nunit/xUnit and a Visual Studio development environment (system must be compatible with NICE core technical stack and with NICE's hosted environment on AWS) Expertise in front-end, UI web development (semantic HTML5/CSS3 and CSS pre-processors); modern front end javascript (including ES6), libraries like jQuery, frameworks like Angular, React; Front-end build tools like Grunt, Gulp Experience of successful development of back-end technologies, databases, developing APIs, meeting data standards, and experience of GitHub and deployment tools such as TeamCity and Octopus Deploy Experience developing scalable, load-balanced web applications: Experience conducting load tests, performance profiling and optimizing performance bottlenecks Experience of delivering software to high level of quality through automated testing (unit/integration/acceptance); mantenance of a good level of automated test code coverage (60-70%). Knowledge of software development best practices Experience in building responsive web applications suitable for a variety of devices and screen sizes and designing for touch devices; Ability to build for IE8+, Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Experience of designing, implementing and testing to meet WCAG 2.0 AA Nice to Haves Experience of working within a medicial technologies environment (devices, diagnostics, digital health tools) or similar Demonstrable understanding of NHS culture and landscape from a technology/digital perspective and the potential barriers this may bring to an agile delivery. Experience with NoSQL databases such as RavenDB, MongoDB, NancyFx Web framework, Docker, dotnet core, Node.js in order to build a system compatible with wider NICE technical stack No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 6 Proposal Criteria Please respond against the first package of work available at http://labs.nice.org.uk/medtechscan/ Proposed approach and methodology for delivery and governance of this project (20%) Proposed approach to gather stakeholder and user needs, and end-to-end user journeys (20%) How will the solution manage the commercial and sensitive data requirements of the project (10%) Proposed deliverables and timeline for Discovery and Alpha (5%) Potential risks and dependencies to the project. How they have been identified? What are suggested approaches to manage them? (5%) Proposed team structure and profile of team members including CVs (10%) Cultural Fit Criteria Collaborative working, sharing knowledge with NICE (2%) Transparent and shared decision-making (2%) Pro-active approach to problem solving (2%) Learning culture, adopting lessons learned throughout the project (2%) Will work with the ethos of the NHS Values (http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/nhscoreprinciples.aspx) (2%) Payment Approach Fixed price Assessment Method Written proposal Case study Work history Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 10% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers Budget range initial 4 month contract is capped at £81,856 excl. vat to deliver to end of alpha. total project cost for 12 months is capped at £322,762 excl. vat. bids over the stated budget will not be considered