How can you effectively manage procurement for healthcare information systems?

First of all get Confidentiality agreement in place - Then have the Data Protection Agreement done.... if your legal wants any other clause(s) then get those in the pre-bid Terms and get the suppliers agree to that. Supplier Due Diligence should be very strict and have all possible scenarios that can go wrong. The Backup plans should be considered very well. Contract should have the information and personal data security as the utmost importance.

To manage the procurement of a healthcare information system effectively, define requirements, conduct market research, develop an RFP, evaluate proposals, conduct vendor demonstrations, check references, negotiate contracts, plan implementation, monitor progress, conduct user acceptance testing, provide user training, and monitor ongoing performance. By following these steps, you can ensure a thorough and successful procurement process for the healthcare information system.

Procurement for healthcare information system required additional specialization of healthcare system and its mechanism other than procurement Specialization. Need to have full knowledge of healthcare system then only you will be good in fulfilling healthcare requirements.

I agree with having clear alignment on what you want to achieve (outcomes) with the new HIS and how you will be measuring succes upon. I doubt whether you would need already functional and technical specifications. This suggest you might be an expert in HIS yourself whilst you might not and want to select a partner therefore.

Apart from defining specifications, have a clear understanding of interconnectivity if your final solution requires multiple systems talking to each other. Defining end points is key.

There are always suppliers / consultants in your organization also working for others and so I would also / always ask them about their perspective on the market. Then reach out to parties like Forester, Gartner, e.o. to gather an overview on marketplayers and their position towards each other. And start inviting some vendors to tell you about the marketplace. Finally talk with your collegeas in the market and ask them about what they use and their experience so far. Always ask also the experts, so in last case, the people with 'hands-on-the-bed' working with the HIS.

Be aware of all regulatory and compliance requirements and vendors experience with them. There may be unforseen limitations and you don't want to find out about that halfway through the build.

During the RFI/RFQ stage and part of the market research, the requirements and scope must be shared with vendors and it would be beneficial to request a product demo. Based on the responses received and product demo, it’s possible to add, modify, and remove requirements before going to the next stage. This will allow for a more accurate scope when conducting the RFP and reduce the possibility of scope creep during project execution.

Don't forget to negotiate the part where the vendor needs to keep up both with innovation and price competitiveness. These times innovation in landscape is continuous and so a solid / fixed contract might end-up being outdated the day it's signed.

Protect yourself with clauses on acceptance before a deliverable or milestone is considered met. Distinguish between testing that the vendor is required to do versus what you will do.

Especially if the vendor is new, certain contractual clauses should be reviewed during the RFP evaluation. These include the SLA, Change Management Process, Dispute Resolution, Non-Disclosure clauses, etc. If evaluated during the RFP, you will be able to find areas where the tendered vendors don't comply with and highlight this early in the process. If these are reviewed before vendor selection, you will have a better negotiation position than post vendor selection.

Monitoring is essential to ensure that desired results have been achieved and the procurement is progressing as intended. Healthcare Information Systems are important as they contain information that is vital for decision making both at individual as well as at macro level, so the vendor once selected should be monitored regularly to ensure maximum efficiency.

Distinguish between the movie and the moment: are you able to improve the outcomes over time? Most of the cases this indicator is much more valuable than looking at one time performance / incidents.

The KPI's can be split into three areas: 1) Vendor KPIs 2) Project KPIs 3) Operational KPIs While the first two should be defined early in the Project lifecycle Operational KPIs can be modified with time. These can help in understanding what went wrong and document the lessons learnt along with defining the changes required on the HIS.

Benchmark the outcomes with your peers using the same HIS and also against others using different HIS solutions. Try to find the blank spots for improvements in cooperation with your vendor. And herewith keep-up your market knowledge for future choices.

Understand all vendor requirements for privacy breaches or hacks. You don't want to find out that your vendor was hacked 6 months after it happened.

It depends on the scope of the contract. We need to define what is expected out of the contract. Ultimately its an aggregation of some Hardware( on Premises/Cloud ) storage and computing with a huge lot of data and analytics! So once we know what we want, we can do a research about the vendors who are in that field and what have they supplied for whom so far! How the data about deceases and patients to be handled and shared is another important aspect, what is the data update policy ( how frequently, and the cost ). Training, Performance monitoring ,after sales services and how to maintain the platform are few important points to consider in addition to the usual NDA and conformance to data protection law of that country.