On Wednesday 23^rd November took place an Innovation Workshop organized by CSC, with the participation of Ramon Maspons, Chief of Innovation at Health Department in Catalonia. This workshop focused on innovation and sustainability in procurement and how to adopt innovative approaches with impact in the procurement strategy. Several representatives from Catalan hospital joined and participated to the session.

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After an insightful introduction from Ramon Maspons on innovation and procurement of innovation in the healthcare sector, a structured open discussion was moderated by Toni Gilabert from CSC, EHPPA’s vice-president in charge of innovation. This brainstorming session was focused around 4 main topics of high interest for the EHPPA members for the next years:

• Prices and costs control introduced by Danny Havenith, President of EHPPA (Mercurhosp, Belgium)
• Supply chain introduced by Kevin Overgoor (NFU, The Netherlands)
• Sustainability and environment issues by Virginia Garcia (CSC, Spain)
• Value of innovation & how to engage procurement in hospitals introduced by Toni Gilabert, Vice-President of EHPPA (CSC, Spain)

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The exchanges between the participants led to 5 main conclusions:

• Strengthening of the dialogue and the cooperation between the actors of the Market (with suppliers, institutions and between public and private sectors)
• Application of flexibility in prices
• Improving the stock control
• Increasing the involvement of procurement in innovation, sustainability
• Fostering the learning and training around sustainable development and innovation

The afternoon was dedicated to a guided visit of the Sant Pau Hospital, followed by a sharing of experiences on public procurement of innovation and the influence of procurement on the hospital’s issues (presentation of the RITMOCORE EU project and project on a regulated price of nitril gloves during COVID-19 pandemic).

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The 21^st General Assembly of EHPPA was held on Thursday 24^th November 2022 in the premises of CSC Headquarter, in Barcelona.

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The morning session was, as always, dedicated to the session “News from the members”. The different presentations generated a lot of discussions and showed us new areas for further exchange of good practices and experiences.

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The following session was dedicated to the internal organization, members and governance of the association. The announcement of the departure of SFOS (Denmark) from the association was officially communicated to the members. The reason of their decision of leaving EHPPA is because this well new Danish organization is no longer in charge of some procurements in Denmark but only in charge of prevention and preparation actions in case of new health crisis. For this reason, SFOS couldn’t be an EHPPA members anymore. The EHPPA association is now composed of 11 members from 10 different European countries.

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Then, new Vice-Presidents were nominated, especially to replace Trine Ann Behnk who left our member Amgros (Denmark) for new professional adventures. In total, three new Vice-Presidents were nominated for the rest of the current President and Board mandate that will end at the end of 2023:

• Elvis Fontaine (CAIB – Switzerland). Vice-President in charge of knowledge sharing & internal training
• Alyson Brett (NHS-CS – UK). Vice-President in charge of sustainability & Social value
• Nuno Costa (SPMS – Portugal). Vice-President in charge of procurement IT system & IT services in general

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They join the existing Board:

• Danny Havenith (MercurHosp – Belgium). President of EHPPA
• Louis Potel (Resah – France). Vice-President in charge of External relationships & EU projects
• Tony Gilabert Perramon (CSC–Spain). Vice-President in charge of Innovation
• Gerwin Meijer (IAZ–The Netherlands). Vice-President in charge of Securing Supplies

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Finally, the following topics were covered during the General Assembly:

• Sharing of experiences: an overview of the challenges faced by public procurers in 2022
• Introduction of sustainability variable as social and environmental criteria in health procurement
• Strengthening the digital presence of EHPPA
• Results and Feedbacks of the 1^st Pan-European Healthcare Procurement Summit
• Significance of the securing supplies for the procurers
• Introduction of a new European project opportunity for EHPPA members

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We have some exciting initiatives coming up on our strategic topics: security of supplies, innovation, sustainability, digitalisation, EU relationships.

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Stay tuned!

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