Development of a digital solution for Surgical Site Infection Post Discharge Questionnaire Reporting

Tender description

Summary of the work To enhance PHE’s existing Surgical Site Infection Surveillance Service (SSISS) for patients completing post-discharge questionnaires (PDQs) to provide digital versions and a caseload management system for hospital staff (to administer and review completed PDQs). The latter will be integrated into SSISS’s web-application. Expected Contract Length 15 months Latest start date Monday 13 January 2020 Budget Range Up to £92,000 including VAT but excluding travel expenses for user research. More information will be provided on the Request for Proposal to shortlisted suppliers. Why the Work is Being Done The majority of surgical site infections occur post-discharge and are treated in the community. Surveillance with high follow-up rates is essential for a complete picture of a hospital’s SSI incidence and to increase the sensitivity for detecting hospitals with high SSI incidence. PDQs are currently paper-based and manually distributed which has considerable administrative and financial resource implications for hospitals, including chasing-up non-responders. Once responses are received they are manually entered into the SSISS web-application. The option of paper based PDQs would be retained for those users who preferred. Problem to Be Solved PHE are looking to move away from a manual intensive paper-based system of PDQs to a solution that drives up patient responses by making it a more convenient process. Due to the manual process uptake of post-discharge surveillance by hospitals is currently low and combined with a failure to obtain a proportion of completed PDQs from patients results in inadequate follow-up. Given the manual nature of the process there are a wide variety of methods used to obtain PDQs and a lack of consistency across hospitals e.g. some hospitals do not chase patients for responses. Who Are the Users Users of the PDQ will be patients (or their carers) who have undergone defined types of surgical procedure. Users will represent diverse cross-sections of the population in England including individuals with limited English language skills, a range of disabilities and different age groups. Patients need a more convenient, digital way to complete the wound healing PDQ after discharge from hospital via PC, Tablet or SMART phone. Users of the Caseload Management System with be hospital surveillance staff and PHE administrators. The system will partially automate the administration of the PDQ and reminders, provide tracking and enable review of completed PDQs. Early Market Engagement None Work Already Done Pre-project, discovery and alpha have been delivered to date and these have identified that a digital PDQ would be the best way of improving the problems with the manual nature of the PDQ and the patient response rates. There was an appetite for the digital PDQ across a range of age groups. A hospital user interface would enable hospitals to enter patient contact details and track responses. Alpha has passed the digital service assessment. https://digitalhealth.blog.gov.uk/2018/05/03/surgical-site-infection-electronic-patient-post-discharge-questionnaire-alpha-service-assessment/ Existing Team PHE will provide: • Product Manager: Senior Scientist and Project Lead • Analyst programmer: working on existing SSISS web application who will work with supplier on integrating the case management module with SSISS Project Board working group • Senior Users: Pilot hospital/s to be identified and PHE SSISS • Senior Internal Supplier: PHE Software Development Unit (SDU) • Product Manager: Senior Scientist and Project Lead • Senior Responsible Officer: Senior Epidemiologist and Section Head • Finance Manager: Head of Business Operations, HCAI&AMR Division • Project Assurance: Digital Policy Lead (PHE Digital), Associate Caldicott Guardian. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • For questions where recent experience is asked, please provide a date of previous projects cited and use this space to insert a hyperlink to a relevant case study for E1. • E1) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience conducting the Beta phase in delivering digital/technology solutions for patient questionnaires/similar systems, which collect/manage identifiable data and track/review patient responses. • E2) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience of applying the principles of user centred design including users of assistive technology to the design/development of digital solutions meeting identified user needs. • E3) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience of delivering a digital project using agile development methodology. • E4) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience web development using Microsoft technologies including ASP.Net MVC, ASP.NET core, ASP.NET Web APIs, MS SQL backend. • E5) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience of designing systems to manage personally identifying information under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). • E6) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience in designing systems that can support secure data exchange and link records between systems and provide email security • E8) Demonstrate recent (within 3 years) experience of delivering loosely coupled services with the potential for reuse Nice to Haves • N1) Recent (within 3 years) experience of successful beta digital service assessments in a healthcare and/or a national scope • N2) Recent (within 3 years) experience of embedding Agile within an organisation with low Agile maturity and working in teams encompassing development staff from customer organisations with low agile maturity • N3) Recent (within 3 years) experience of building on a Discovery and Alpha delivered by another organisation • N4) Experience of building services using standard NHS or GDS design patterns • N5) Knowledge of translation of online content and use of automated translation functionality • Work Location Some work will be carried out in PHE Colindale office while some can be performed off site (within the UK) in co-ordination with staff in PHE’s Offices based in Colindale, London NW9 5EQ and requiring close working relationships with both PHE’s SSISS and SDU teams. Working Arrangments Work may be carried out from multiple locations including the Supplier’s offices elsewhere in the UK. Attendance at PHE Offices in London and for meetings in other locations around England will be required. Supplier staff are expected to be on-site at PHE sufficient to manage relationships with senior stakeholders; the project team and users; and, stakeholders and users in other organisations so that the outcomes of the project may be met. This will include visits to hospitals for user research with staff and patients. The Supplier will prepare PHE staff to take over support and provide further continuing ad-hoc support. Security Clearance Suppliers will need to confirm that all user researchers have been DBS cleared. Additional T&Cs This development will be an enhancement to PHE’s existing owned and managed SSISS, as such the resulting Project-Specific IPRs will be retained solely by PHE and clause 13.8 of the Call-Off Terms and Conditions will not be applicable No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • P1) Proposed approach to Beta methodology and overall plan (max score 25) • P2) What is the potential provider’s approach to agile and working with customers who may have limited experience of agile working (max score 10) • P3) Approach to web development and testing process using Microsoft technologies including ASP.Net MVC, ASP.NET core, ASP.NET Web APIs, MS SQL backend (max score 15) • P4) What is the potential provider’s approach to user centred design (max score 5) • P5) What is the potential provider’s approach to risk and dependency management (max score 5) Cultural Fit Criteria • C1) Working with the project team’s stakeholders who have varying experience of agile methods (max score 5) • C2) Flexible working arrangements and knowledge sharing; (max score 2) • C3) Work within the constraints of existing services, budgets and technologies already used within the programme (max score 5) • C4) Open innovation that explores a wide range of solutions and conclusions that includes demonstrating the limits of IT interventions; and non-IT solutions (max score 3) • C5) Transparent and collaborative when making decisions (max score 2) • C6) Demonstrate your approach to knowledge transfer throughout the duration of the project (max score 3) • The Presentation should summarise the Proposal and demonstrate the approach to cultural fit Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. 1 - you require 3 years experience working with Microsoft development technology. However, reading the Alpha report, it seems like the technology choice is still open. Which part of the project would require Microsoft dev experience? ePDQ will fully require Microsoft development experience in order to enable long term support by the internal PHE development team who use Microsoft technology stack. 2. 2 - One of the criteria is to have recent experience in.net technologies. We have stopped working with.net about 3 years ago, would solutions written in alternative languages be acceptable, e.g. Python? Only solutions written in Microsoft technologies will be acceptable 3. 3 - Who carried out the Discovery and will they be applying for the tender? The Discovery phase was completed by a joint team of in-house staff and external supplier (Clarasys). All suppliers on the DOS Framework can apply for opportunities. However, we have no way of knowing of who is applying via the Digital Marketplace and we cannot see any supplier submissions until after the opportunity deadline has passed. 4. 4 - Which supplier delivered the Alpha stage? are they applying for this opportunity? The Alpha phase was completed by a joint team of in-house staff and external supplier (Aire Logic). All suppliers on the DOS Framework can apply for opportunities. We have no way of knowing of who is applying for via the Digital Marketplace and we cannot see any supplier submissions until after the opportunity deadline has passed. 5. 5 - Would you consider a solution based on a non Microsoft technology stack for this project if the benefits of such an alternative solution from a cost/licensing perspective could be demonstrated? We would propose an open source PHP based alternative. No - only solutions based on Microsoft technology stack will be considered because this is the technology stack supported by the PHE in-house development team who will be responsible for the long term maintenance and support of the application. 6. 6 - Are you working with an existing supplier? No 7. 7 - Given only the alpha phase has been completed why is the project making.NET an essential requirement. Is there scope for non.NET solutions if they meet the needs of the service and users? 7 - Given only the alpha phase has been completed why is the project making.NET an essential requirement. Is there scope for non.NET solutions if they meet the needs of the service and users? 8. 8 - Given only the alpha phase has been completed why is the project making.NET an essential requirement. Is there scope for non.NET solutions if they meet the needs of the service and users? Apologies for the response for question 7. I made an error whilst copying and pasting on Digital Marketplace.Please see below response:The project is making .NET an essential technology requirement because this is the technology stack supported by the PHE in-house development team who will be responsible for the long term maintenance and support of the application.