AGENCIA DE QUALITAT I AVALUACIO SANITARIES DE CATALUNYA

Their core work

AQuAS is the Catalan health quality and assessment agency, a public body that evaluates healthcare technologies, services, and policies for the regional health system. In H2020, they specialize in designing and procuring innovative health IT solutions — particularly through pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovation (PPI) — acting as a bridge between healthcare needs and technology providers. They bring deep expertise in integrated care models for chronic and elderly patients, eHealth deployment, and health system evaluation, serving as the demand-side voice that ensures research innovations actually meet clinical and patient needs.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In 2015–2018, AQuAS focused broadly on integrated care for older people (SUSTAIN), mobile health tools (m-RESIST, MAGIC), cybersecurity for health data (KONFIDO), and launched its first major procurement-driven projects (PRO4VIP, ANTI-SUPERBUGS PCP). From 2019 onward, the focus sharpened toward eHealth-enabled integrated care (TIQUE, STARS), health innovation procurement scaling (EURIPHI, PIPPI), and moved into clinical diagnostics validation (oncNGS) and pandemic response (PERISCOPE). The trend is a clear shift from experimenting with digital health tools toward systematically procuring and evaluating them for real-world health system deployment.

AQuAS is evolving from a care-model researcher into a strategic health innovation buyer and evaluator, making them increasingly relevant for any team that needs a public-sector demand partner to pull research into clinical practice.

How they like to work

AQuAS primarily operates as a participant (11 of 14 projects) but has coordinated 3 projects, including their largest (ANTI-SUPERBUGS PCP at EUR 2.7M), showing they can lead when procurement expertise is central. With 169 unique partners across 24 countries, they maintain a broad European network rather than relying on a small circle — typical of a public agency that connects diverse health systems and technology suppliers. Their strength in a consortium is as the demand-side authority: they define what the health system actually needs and evaluate whether solutions deliver.

AQuAS has collaborated with 169 unique partners across 24 countries, giving them one of the broader networks for a regional health agency. Their connections span Southern and Western European health systems, technology SMEs, and university hospitals.

What sets them apart

AQuAS occupies a rare niche: they are not a technology developer or a research university, but a public health evaluation agency that knows how to buy innovation through EU procurement instruments (PCP and PPI). This makes them an ideal partner for any consortium that needs to demonstrate real-world demand and a credible pathway from prototype to health system adoption. Few organizations combine health technology assessment expertise with hands-on experience running multi-million euro pre-commercial procurement processes.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ANTI-SUPERBUGS PCP
  Their largest project (EUR 2.7M) and a coordinator role — a pre-commercial procurement effort to develop solutions against antimicrobial resistance, showcasing AQuAS as a procurement leader.
• SUSTAIN
  A well-funded (EUR 433K) multi-country study on sustainable integrated care for older people across Europe, central to their core expertise.
• oncNGS
  Signals a newer direction into genomics diagnostics validation (NGS, liquid biopsies), extending their evaluation role into precision medicine.