Undaunted by the apparent lack of interest in their multi supplier framework agreement for telecare & telehealth tender last year, the East Shires Purchasing Organisation (ESPO) is now seeking to establish a multi supplier framework agreement for the supply of systems to facilitate the monitoring by local authorities and other service commissioners and service providers of home-based care services. The framework will apparently also include solutions and products that assist in the scheduling of home care visits and the rostering of care staff.
According to the announcement, the requirement is for both stand alone and integrated systems, with various hosting options and technologies. Systems should ideally be tailored to the needs of the home care sector.
At this stage, ESPO is keen to engage with interested parties to discuss the products and services currently available in the market, options regarding the structure of the procurement and the anticipated direction of future market developments. Those keen to participate in this market consultation are asked to contact Louis Blake on 0116 294 4055 or l.blake@espo.org, by 30 August 2014.
Although having a touch of “big brother” (and in this Editor’s experience introduction of such monitoring can curtail substantial fraud), home-based monitoring systems can offer great benefit to staff, for example by providing lone worker protection & more flexible rostering, and to care recipients who are now better assured of a quality service. Let us also hope that ESPO recognises the importance of combining such care monitoring with telecare, to enable services that can respond quickly to telecare alerts, and can divert workers away, for example, from a person who has already got up and so needs no help so doing that day.
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