Call for Proposals for funding of resources for use in training about clinical audit

 6 September 2010

HQIP is continuing its educational and training strategy by pump-priming the development of specific resources for use within training or education of professionals from various disciplines, in the practice of clinical audit.

HQIP invites proposals for funding of development of specific resources for learning on clinical audit from training providers and product developers in any sector.

• Application questionnaire >>
• Other HQIP education and training >>
• Frequently Asked Questions >>
• Legal note >>

Bidders can include providers of specialist clinical audit training; providers of specialist clinical professional training who cover clinical audit within their courses; those who provide wider training for professionals who may use clinical audit within their clinical or managerial or other health sector administrative roles; or companies that simply develop educational resources that they then supply on to training providers to use.

Indicative examples might include:

• Schools of nursing or medicine or for other healthcare professions who are training students in those disciplines pre and post qualification
• Independent providers of specialist audit training courses, aimed at audit specialists (and clinicians)
• Training bodies for managers, commissioners or internal auditors

What the funding may cover:  This funding is for the costs of development of products or resources used within training or other learning, which can include the costs of people and any other legitimate development cost. The funding is not available to pay tutor or teacher time in delivering training, or pay for the running costs or advertisement of courses.

HQIP is offering development funding to ‘kick start' the emergence of new and imaginative ways of teaching and learning about audit. These can be in any medium - on line, taught, games, other interactive learning, distance learning, handheld devices and phone based (eg phone apps), video and film. These are just examples.

HQIP will make available up to £20,000 for any single proposal, but the typical award will be much less than this. The award is designed to stimulate ideas and the pump-priming costs of new projects rather than meet the full cost of development in most cases.

Our primary intention is to widen the range of methods and opportunities for learning in clinical audit, and to a wider audience; and to enable learning that may fall outside of formulaic teaching approaches and settings.

Conditions on any award:  This scheme is not designed to offer profit to any party, including HQIP and any developer. Our secondary intention is to ensure, through condition of our pump-priming of funding, that the resources are widely available for use, i.e. by others in addition to the organisation that obtains the pump-priming funding. We want to create the emergence of a library of resources for any training provider to use. Therefore we propose that any organisation receiving funding under this scheme would be required to supply the product into a bank of resources available from HQIP. The cost to other providers of using the resource or obtaining multiple copies (such as of a printed resource) would be restricted to a cost agreed with HQIP payable to the developer.

Any developer could at any time produce resources and both use them themselves and theoretically attempt to sell them to other providers. To date the main incentive for any developer of new products is in improving the appeal of their own training they can sell commercially. However, under this scheme, unique use would be lost but replaced by other incentives.

The incentive to any developer from this funding is that although they lose exclusive rights to the material, and the potential to sell the product at profit, because they would be required to supply them via HQIP, they do receive incentive funding that would otherwise be unavailable and payment at cost for their use by others.  A developer that is a training provider still has potential to increase their earned income from a better educational offer in respect of their own training that the resource enables them to make, albeit others may also use it too; and they do receive acknowledgement and have their development costs met partially or in full by the development grant and off-set by subsequent payments for use mediated by HQIP.NB: See 'LEGAL NOTE' for details of how to access full terms and conditions. 

Examples:

Training provider X submits proposal for product Y. They estimate their development costs to be £30,000.

HQIP agrees to contribute £20,000 towards this product for development. The developer has outstanding costs of £10,000, which they cannot recoup from direct sales of their product. They can recoup these costs through other funding or sponsorship; and by future sales of training which utilise this product. However they are credited for development of the product when it is used by any other provider; and other users of the product pay at subsidised rate for access to the product, which over time recompenses part, or perhaps even all, dependent on the level of their use, of the development costs.

Developer B submits a proposal for a resource of total cost £8,000. HQIP pays in full. The developer makes no further income from any sales, but their full development costs were covered and they are credited with the product development. There are no costs to providers in using them, other than cost of obtaining copies in the case of DVD or print resources, for example, which is handled without profit.

How to apply:

The application process will be managed by our consultants, Turner Townsend.

Applicants should complete the attached questionnaire, answering the questions clearly and precisely. The total length of any submission must be not more than 3000 words including any annexes and supporting material. Any proposals longer than this will automatically be rejected.

Deadlines: Bids must be submitted by 7 October 2010 and we will communicate decisions by 22 October 2010.

If funded, developers must accept the terms and conditions of the award, set out in general terms above, but which will be contained in a formal contract. This will commit the developer to making the project available, via HQIP, to providers of clinical audit training for their use. The contracts, which will be individually negotiated, will specify the fee to be paid to enable their wider use.

LEGAL NOTE: The conditions mentioned above are in no way intended to form any legal obligations, such conditions need to be read in conjunction with HQIPs full terms and conditions which can be obtained by contacting communications@hqip.org.uk.

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Frequently Asked Questions:

1) What criteria are you intending to use to assess bids - particularly in the case of bids for the same resource, e.g. 2 bidders wanting to develop a clinical audit training DVD?

The bids will be assessed on their individual merits. Each application will be scored, based on the application form submitted, by a panel of HQIP staff and Clinical audit professionals. If more than one idea is submitted tenders will be awarded based on the highest scoring tender for that particular idea, based on criteria such as originality, the track record of the provider, the costing, the nature of the described project etc.

2) I'm not entirely clear on how the resources will be distributed/made available, etc. For example, assume we were successful in gaining £5K from HQIP to develop a DVD that cost us £10K in total development costs. (i.e. 5K initial contribution from HQIP and the developer). Once the DVD was produced - who would technically own it, would it be freely available, who would pay for subsequent costs to copy and distribute the DVD to those who wanted to use it, could either/both developer charge for each DVD?

Whilst the IPR would be owned by the developer, the products will be available only to the developer for use in their own training, or to users at cost price. The developer cannot sell the product separately or at higher than cost price. Whilst they will organise distribution and handle enquiries from potential users, they must keep logs and report to HQIP regularly on this process. The actual stocks would be held by the developer and they would have to cover their postal costs, for example. So if a user wanted to order three copies of a DVD on which HQIP and the developer had agreed the cost price was £5 each, they would place a request via the developer, and the developer would charge £15 plus postage, and notify HQIP at a period of frequency to be agreed.

3) What would the situation be in the event of international interest in the resource?

We will issue separate clarification of international rights in due course.

4) Do HQIP have any specific timelines that developers must meet in terms of getting training products to market? e.g. it is expected all products would be developed and available no later than 1st January 2011/1st April 2011, etc.

There are no specific deadlines, deadlines will depend on the complexity of the product and the developers individual needs and will be negotiated prior to commencement. It is anticipated that most products would be completed by April 2011.

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5) We are interested in developing one product in partnership with HQIP - i.e. in essence requesting that they are a part of the bid and helping to develop the resource we have in mind. How would this work/could this work?

Support may be available from HQIP to assist in the development of the products. If HQIP support is required, the amount and nature of such support should be made clear in the proposal. This request for support will then be considered as part of the proposal.

6) Is this likely to be the only round of bids for products or will there be more in future, e.g. as there have been with the multi-site audit project funding?

At this stage it is anticipated that this is the only round of bidding for the allocated funding, however further calls for funding might be made in the future.

7) Will the products be subjected to a QA process?

Yes. All bidders will be expected to submit a draft product for review by HQIP and a panel of clinical audit professionals prior to completion. Detailed feedback will be provided on the draft product in order to enable any necessary changes to be made.

8) Can you confirm who would be able to access resources freely - i.e. England, Wales, etc but what about Scotland, Ireland, etc. In terms of 'international' usage of resources - can you confirm details of how this will work will be clarified prior to the deadline for submissions on 7th October.

Resources will be available to users anywhere to purchase but we will not translate unless separately funded Sales outside of England may be set at a higher rate than sales to English users in discussion with HQIP.

9) You mentioned that 'bids' will be considered by HQIP and other clinical audit professionals. Can you clarify how other clinical audit professionals will be sourced and how possible conflict of interest will be reviewed and minimised.

Individual names of those on the panel will not be revealed. However, no bidders will be allowed to sit on the panel and all bids will be reviewed anonymously so as to prevent any selection bias. The panel is selected by HQIP and is made up of known experts within the field.

10) Would a bid relating to training materials for ‘significant event audit' be accepted?

As stated in the advertisement, we are seeking training materials in the field of clinical audit. All bids will be considered in terms of their relevance to this particular field and scored accordingly.

11) Can you specify who would be able to access licensed training materials developed by HQIP free of charge, e.g. geographically - England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, beyond?

Please see question 9. Training materials will be available to all international users although we may decide to put in price variation by geographical region.

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