This contract notice invites interested operators to submit tenders to a procurement.

The procurement aims to trigger new solutions to be developed and tested to address the following challenge: There is a huge unfulfilled need for better monitoring of vital signs in high-risk patients who are on regular patient wards in the hospital or at home. Therefore Nightingale is aiming to connect patients and carers by developing and using wearable sensor technology and self-learning, context-sensitive software. We invite every interested party to visit the Nightingale website: http://www.nightingale-h2020.eu for more information and participate in the open market consultation.

This PCP procurement is a joint procurement by different procurers across Europe that are all facing the same common challenge and are thus looking for similar solutions (so-called ‘buyers group’).

The procurement will take the form of a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) under which R&D service contracts will be awarded to a number of R&D providers in parallel in a phased approach. This will make it possible to compare competing alternative solutions.

Each selected operator will be awarded a framework agreement that covers 3 R&D phases.

The 3 phases are:

— R&D up to solution design;

— R&D up to a prototype;

— R&D up to original development, validation and testing of a limited set of first products or services.

After each phase, intermediate evaluations will be carried out to progressively select the best of the competing solutions. The contractors with the best-value-for-money solutions will be offered a specific contract for the next phase.

The procurement is expected to start in February 2018 (deadline for submitting proposals is 12.1.2018) and will end in November 2020 (the expected completion date of this PCP).

The selected operators will retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (IPRs) that they generate during the PCP and will be able to use them to exploit the full market potential of the developed solutions i.e. beyond the procurers.

This procurement is exempted from the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), the EU public procurement directives and the national laws that implement them. This is because it concerns the procurement of R&D services where the benefits do not accrue exclusively to the contracting authority for its use in the conduct of its own affairs.

Publication of this contract notice in the EU Official Journal is not to be understood as a waiver of this exemption. Publication is made on a voluntary basis and the procurement will not follow the procedures under the EU public procurement directives, but rather the procedure described in the tender documentation.

The open procedure was chosen for formal reasons only. This is because it is not possible to publish a contract notice without selecting 1 of the listed procedures.

Offers may be submitted in English. All communication (before, during and after the procurement) can be made in English.