Email"The points4life loyalty programme will seek to drive behavioural change through rewarding individuals for making positive choices around their health behaviour," say Manchester City Council and Manchester Primary Care Trust in the tender for the scheme, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 27 January 2009.
Participants will be rewarded "for making positive choices" with points which will can be redeemed for "healthy goods and services" from both public and private sector sources.
The winning bidder, which the tender estimates will receive £4m to £15m over three years, will have to include "an unstructured physical activity loyalty solution" to award points for activity which does not go through a formal booking or payment system, such as cycling, walking and running in parks.
More conventionally, the bidder will have to provide a central computer system to manage points, a contact centre accepting queries by telephone, email, text messaging and online chat, a website with secure access to points accounts, registration through mobile phones.
It will also have to handle non technological activities, including marketing and public relations. Manchester "is seeking a single comprehensive solution that meets all of its requirements," according to the tender, which adds that as a result it will consider consortia and prime contractors.
The tender stresses the importance of learning from existing loyalty card schemes, saying that it "will take knowledge and technology from the private sector and apply them to the public sector".
The scheme, which will get its public launch in the second half of 2009, is linked to the government's national Change4Life health campaign. It will be open to anyone who lives, works or travels into Manchester. Its website says that, depending on its effectiveness, the points scheme may be adopted by other areas in future.
Manchester is one of nine towns and cities chosen by the Department of Health to share a £30m Change4Life development fund. Other schemes are significantly less ambitious, however, and will not rely on the use of ICT.
Sheffield will undertake work to make breastfeeding easier in the city, Portsmouth will introduce new signs to help walkers, runners and cyclists times themselves, and Middlesbrough will bring in programmes encouraging urban farms.
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