End-user involvement enhancing innovativeness in public procurement. Evidence from a healthcare procurement.

Abstract

This paper examines public procuring, aiming to increase understanding on how living lab approach and end-user involvement create innovativeness and enhance public procurement results, providing effectiveness and better solutions. Empirical findings are based on a real-life unique public procurement in the healthcare field where living lab approach was used through product testing phase which was included in the procurement procedure. Selected group of users performed product testing in a real homecare environment. Quality of the product formed on the basis of product testing was in significant role for the first time in public healthcare related procurement of City of Oulu, Finland; the winning solution was not the most affordable but the one obtaining highest scores by users. The findings of the study suggest that product testing as a part of public procurement should be more widely taken into use, however, considering the right balance of price-quality ratio to ensure innovativeness. Based on the study, we propose a framework for product testing as a part of public procurement through open procedure.