St. Olavs Hospital HF (Org.no. 883974832) to procure new gastroscope and pediatric colonoscope for the Medical Dept. at St. Olavs Hospital HF.
The clinic performs about 8,000 endoscopies annually, as well as other similar procedures, and relies on equipment for effective patient diagnosis.
These interventions are also risky – any surgery involves some kind of risk, especially those endoscopies involving therapeutic intervention. It is therefore important that the hospital maintains diagnostic activities using endoscopic equipment that the clinical staff is already familiar with.
Currently, the department primarily uses endoscopes with accessories from Olympus Norway AS as a consequence of a procurement during Construction Phase II under the auspices of the Central Norway Regional Health Authority. The equipment that will now be procuring must be considered holistically, in that it must conserve our clinical and technical resources. Furthermore, due to economic considerations, this equipment will be procured from the same supplier as before.
The department already has extensive training of all employees who use the aforementioned devices, and it is thus saves resources to purchase the equipment the same supplier. In addition, given the in-house patient-care stemming from this, purchasing another system than those described in this announcement will lead to an unnecessary consumption of resources.
Whereas coupling different types of endoscopes to existing equipment has previously been possible, it requires spacers and junctions, which can degrade image quality during examinations resulting in disproportionately poorer diagnostics. New endoscopes must therefore be compatible with existing equipment at the department to prevent unnecessary endoscopy, which – from a resource-expenditure basis – is of little social benefit to the contracting authority.
More qualitative patient care reduces the risk of possible complications for the patient, and patients should not be exposed to more discomfort than necessary. The equipment must be able to function optimally between departments with similar equipment and minimal discomfort for the patient. For example, the ability to rapidly change endoscopes from ordinary to ultra thin saves both the patient and the system from several purges and probes.
The department's duties include: not exceeding deadlines, shortening waiting times, and increasing production by allowing several departments to share equipment, and this forms a platform for use across departments and clinics at the hospital.
Fast access to spare parts and service expertise is thus an important condition for satisfying the above requirements/tasks.
After a review of the actual needs, based on our clinical treatment methods, as well as economic considerations, it would be disproportionately costly for the contracting authority if our needs were to be met by replacing existing equipment with those from another manufacturer.
In the event that it is necessary to procure endoscopes as described above from another supplier, but that turn out to be incompatible with existing light sources or processors, the prerequisites for clinical patient care be so altered as to be counter-productive. A re-procurement of equipment from any other than Olympus Norway AS would mean that the clinic would have to consider a total turnover, representing an investment cost estimated 35-40 million NOK incl. VAT, which is currently not realistic for the contracting authority.
We have therefore put clinical, technical, resource and economic justifications as the basis for these purchases.
The procurement's value is estimated to be approx. NOK 1,600,000 incl. VAT.