Medicines Management Service

Concepts

• health and social work
• leicester
• trust pharmacy
• medicines management service
• provision of a medicines management service
• services commencement date
• monthly service charge
• medicines storage
• medicines cabinets
• ibsl

Location

Leicester

Description

The provision of a medicines management service for a period of 15 years from the services commencement date as further described in II.2.4).

Total Quantity or Scope

The Trust intends to award a contract to to IBSL (UK) Ltd and Deenova SrL (the ‘Suppliers’) for the provision of a medicines management service which is an integrated IT, robotic and automated medicines storage and delivery solution that includes: • the provision of an off-site Unit Dose Laboratory (UDL) including enabling works; • provision of UDL staff; • all enabling works at the Trust; • installation and maintenance of automated medicines cabinets on wards; • integration with the Trust pharmacy ordering and receipt system; • integration with the Trust e-prescribing system; • integration with the Trust patient admission, discharge and transfer system; • integration with the Trust pharmacy ordering and receipt system; • equipment and hardware (robotics, carts, trolleys, devices); • enabling works – through a sub-contractor, to be approved by the Authority; • transportation from the UDL to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General Hospital and Glenfield Hospital (any other sites in the future that may be under the control of the Trust); • training of Trust staff. For the avoidance of doubt the contract will have an enabling phase and the 15-year term shall not start until the ‘Services Commencement Date’ when the Trust will pay a monthly service charge in line with the contract. The Trust will enter into a contract following a minimum 10 day standstill period starting the day after this notice is published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Award Detail

Award Criteria

CPV Codes

• 85000000 - Health and social work services

Indicators

• Award on basis of price and quality.

Legal Justification

The Trust is awarding a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union. It considers that the contract with the suppliers falls outside the scope of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (the ‘Regulations’), because the award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition in the Official Journal of the European Union is permitted pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) of the Regulations i.e. where the works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator by reason of absence of competition for technical reasons, and no reasonable alternative or substitute exists. For the reasons explained below, the Trust is of the view that the contract can only be awarded to the suppliers because competition is absent for technical reasons, and no reasonable alternative or substitute exists. Following a successful pilot at the Leicester General Hospital the Trust published a Prior Information Notice 2015/S 234-425081 to establish the level interest and ability in the market place to support the Trust to deliver a Trust wide solution. Following that PIN, a number of potential suppliers expressed an interest, only 4 then provided a proposal and 2 of those were not able to provide a solution. The Trust considered the relevant market and took the view that if it had sought to procure the services covered by the contract by way of an advertised procurement process, competition would have been absent for technical reasons because no supplier in the relevant market other than the Suppliers would, in practice, have been able to put forward a viable bid that would have met the Trust’s lawful requirements. This is because this is the first solution (as described at II.2.4) above) of its kind within the NHS in the UK. The suppliers hold the exclusive UK license for the software solution and the hardware required to deliver the solution required by the Trust. The Trust considers that it would have been unrealistic to have expected any suppliers other than the suppliers to have the intellectual property rights to be able to deliver the solution and fulfil the Trust’s requirements. The Trust also considers that the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement.

Other Information

V.2.1 sets out the date on which the Trust awarded the contract and that as noted in II.2.4) it has not entered into the contract.