The ProeHealth study aims to improve the procurement of ICT solutions for healthcare by providing guidelines for the organisations involved in the procurement process. Both public and private healthcare organisations are included in this. The guidelines will be there to help them from the stage of planning procurement, as it arises that adopting an eHealth solutions is the most suitable approach, following up with instructions for transfer of planning to the procurement specification and finally the procurement process.
The question could be raised as to why such guidelines are necessary. The answer to this is that procuring eHealth solutions is a complex procurement process, quite different to other types of procurement. Experience shows that this complexity can lead to disappointing results. Often, expected benefits are not achieved or value for money is lacking. This leads to the conclusion that support is needed for those carrying out the procurement of eHealth solutions. Further proof for this hypothesis is the lack of any existing procurement guidelines which address eHealth components specifically.
