Mersey Care is seeking information from Providers of Telehealth Services which it will use to help inform the development of its service specification.

Mersey Care is engaging early with potential service providers for Telehealth Services.

The service could be provided by a single supplier or consortia of suppliers with a lead supplier, under one contract with an estimated length of at least 5 years.

The aim of this exercise is to gauge interest in this opportunity and field for innovative or competitive proposals to improve our local provision.

Telehealth (or digitally enabled care at home) refers to the use of various point-of-care technologies to monitor a patient's physiological status and health conditions.

It involves electronic sensors or equipment to monitor vital health signs remotely from home or while on the move.

Readings are transmitted to a response centre or a clinician's computer where they are monitored against set parameters.

Evidence that vital signs are outside of these parameters triggers a response, allowing the clinician to make decisions about potential interventions in real time, without the patient needing to attend a clinic.

The Cheshire & Merseyside service supports over 2000 residents per annum, making it one of the largest in the UK.

Mersey Care have set aside a budget of circa £1.2M per annum (including VAT) to further widen it reach, benefiting more people with COPD, heart disease, diabetes and other long-term conditions, together with supporting the growth and development of virtual wards and digitally enabled care at home.

Mersey Care wish to continue to build the evidence base around impact and to further refine and enhance the service to maximise benefits.

Mersey Care are seeking to procure a Telehealth service provider (or consortium of providers) to deliver a flexible and continuously innovative service while also demonstrating the capacity to upscale the current service to further expand the wide-scale implementation of digitally enabled care at home.

Mersey Care seeks solutions which have the potential for connectivity with Local Authority telecare monitoring services and devices to maximise the potential for both reactive and proactive support for people with care needs.

Note that Mersey Care intends to retain the back-end clinical monitoring and clinical support elements of the Telehealth service as part of their Community Health Services provision.

However, we welcome suggestions regarding the most effective demarcation between the clinical and non-clinical aspects of the service.

Mersey Care would like to hear views, suggestions and proposals from interested Providers or consortia as part of this market engagement exercise.