SBRI: Near-patient Bilirubin Testing to enable Neonatal Care at Home Challenge

To lead a project, you can:

• be any type of organisation of any size, registered in the UK, European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) that can demonstrate a credible and practical route to market
• work alone or with others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector as subcontractors.

Applications must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively for R&D Services. R&D does not include:

• commercial development activities such as quantity production
• supply to establish commercial viability or to recover R&D costs
• integration, customisation, incremental adaptations and improvements to existing products or processes.

Contracts will be between NHS Golden Jubilee and winning participants. Phase 1 is allocated 60,000 GPB inclusive of VAT for a maximum of 4 projects. Phase 1 projects can range in size up to a total cost of 15,000 GPB inclusive of VAT.

The open innovation challenge provides an opportunity for organisations, working in partnership with NHS Scotland Innovation Hubs to develop disruptive innovative solutions that focus on the monitoring of jaundiced newborns at home. These solutions will focus on near-patient bilirubin testing to develop innovative care pathways and enable family centred care at home for babies who do not require to be in hospital.

Innovative solutions are sought for near-patient bilirubin monitoring of newborns which are accurate, efficient, safe, accessible and equitable. These solutions will enable the development of innovative care pathways.

Solutions must be working towards compliance with UKAS accredited point of care testing (POCT) (ISO15189:2022) methodology for analysis.

When fully developed, solutions must include a real-time process to incorporate results into NHS Scotland electronic patient records.

Phase 1: Technical feasibility studies

This means planned research or critical investigation to gain new knowledge and skills for developing new products, processes or services.

There is a potential Phase 2 planned with the expectation that 2 contracts are awarded, chosen from the successful phase 1 applicants, to develop a prototype and undertake field testing for up to 12 months. The total budget for phase 2 is 160,000 GPB. Phase 2 projects can range in size up to total costs of 80,000 GPB inclusive of VAT. At this stage contracts will be given for phase 1 only.

The goal of innovation and service redesign is to deliver family centred care at home for babies who do not require to be in hospital.

Developing care at home is a current priority across all UK NHS services and within the maternity landscape offers an enormous opportunity to reduce unnecessary maternal bed and cot occupancy. It will undoubtedly improve patient flow through neonatal and maternity services.

In NHS Scotland with the move to centralisation of Perinatal care for the sickest mothers and babies, developing processes to minimise unnecessary maternal bed and cot occupancy supports this model. Ensuring the smallest and sickest patients can be treated in the right centre at the right time.

Near-patient bilirubin testing to enable neonatal care at home would:

• Achieve substantial cost efficiencies to the NHS by minimising unnecessary maternity and cot day’s usage.
• Improve maternal and family bonding in the newborn period by keeping families together, appreciating the positive long term impact this has on maternal and infant mental health.
• Impact positively on breast feeding rates with all the benefits for long term health and wellbeing this realises.
• Reduce waiting times for decisions on treatment of jaundice in the new born, impacting on the potential complications of untreated high bilirubin levels.
• Improve the patient journey and family experience of those experiencing neonatal jaundice. • Reduce health inequalities by widening this care pathway to families in more diverse geographical areas, a key ambition of NHS Scotland.
• Reduce staff and family travel impacting positively on sustainability and the environment.
• Support the long-term vision that neonatal care at home is embedded into normal clinical practice. Technology, patient monitoring systems and pathways with integration with the NHS patient record will all be in daily clinical use to realise this ambition. Patient satisfaction will increase, staff satisfaction will increase and efficiency of in patient resources will be optimised ensuring fiscal efficiencies to the NHS.
• Validate near-patient testing technologies with transferable potential to other adult and paediatric disease settings.

A Briefing to provide further background and an opportunity for applicants to ask questions will take place on Wednesday 25 October 2023 at 10:00 am.

Any Questions relating to the competition should be submitted through the Q&A portal via Public Contracts Scotland.

All questions should be directed to the Q&A portal on PCS before 11am UK time on 6 December 2023 or at the Q&A session during the briefing event.