IOM NAS Workshop for Health Data Quality

Notice of Intent to Sole Source to Institute of Medicine (IOM) On behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC), the Program Support Center intends to award a sole source contract to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences to convene a workshop entitled "Data Quality to Support Learning from Digital Health Information." This workshop is designed to engage leading experts in reviewing the challenges, defining key questions, and exploring a strategic framework for progress on the issue of health data quality for learning system uses. The solicitation number is 11-233-SOL-00726. The solicitation is issued as a Request for Proposal (RFP). The sole-source contractor is the only known source capable of developing a workshop designed to explore the potential, define the current state of play, identify barriers, discuss approaches, and consider actionable implementation strategies to defining and/or achieve consensus on the data quality issues as it relates to clinical and patient-reported data for various health system learning objectives, such as research, healthcare quality improvement, and population health improvement. The purpose of this acquisition is to convene a workshop activity and develop an unbiased, individually authored, technically expert, descriptive summary report describing core challenges, opportunities, key questions, and potential strategic framework for progress leveraging the opportunities to answer the questions and overcome the challenges to identifying the characteristics of data and/or data usage necessary to efficiently and optimally leverage the digital health data resources and infrastructures to sustain a rapidly learning health system. Although individually authored, the report that is the deliverable for which this acquisition is being funded, developing the appropriately thorough, scientifically sound, operationally practical description requires factual an analytic input from leading experts in key fields. Core Tasks (1) Apply to the design of the workshop activity, including planning and preparatory study, a deep and widely recognized institutional expertise in studying and describing the nature and characteristics of a learning health system and the opportunities, complexities, and barriers inherent to the effort to transform the overall US healthcare system to one that learns across settings of care, disease conditions, and that generates as well as rapidly assimilates, translates, and applies to everyday services provision advances in biomedical science. (2) Rapidly engage volunteer efforts from an established cohort of leading experts representing a variety of stakeholder perspectives, through existing relationships of mutual trust and respect between the contractor and the academic, industry, provider, and consumer advocate stakeholder communities. (3) Contractor must produce and publish an institutionally authored report of study results that will be recognized throughout the biomedical and information science as well as nationwide provider, payor, and policymaker communities as an authoritative, independent scholarly work that will serve as a touchstone catalyzing and influencing further discussion and independent action by a broad array of stakeholders within those communities. As the author and publisher of the report, the contractor must have established national reach and be perceived as an academically and scientifically robust information broker that is not biased toward any particular stakeholder community and that has no commercial interest in engaging in work to address the core challenges, opportunities, key questions, and/or to execute the potential strategic framework for progress leveraging the opportunities that are expected to be identified by the study's results. (4) To assure the contractor is capable of rapid and successful effort, and of producing the report with the needed characteristics, contractor must demonstrate: (a) an established network of leading experts across the array of relevant stakeholder communities who have demonstrated their commitment to collaboration with and through the contractor by participating in prior activities on a voluntary basis; and (b) a body of reports relevant to learning health system characteristics and to health data as a public good that have been widely accepted by stakeholder communities, illustrated by the circulation metrics for these publications and by breadth of citation by authors in relevant health science, information science, and/or policy communities. Established in 1970, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which was chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The IOM asks and answers the nation's most pressing questions about health and health care. Its aim is to help those in government and the private sector make informed health decisions by providing evidence upon which they can rely. Each year, more than 2,000 individuals, members, and nonmembers volunteer their time, knowledge, and expertise to advance the nation's health through the work of the IOM. Executive Order 12832 of January 19, 1993, authorizes obtaining services from the National Academy of Sciences on a noncompetitive basis because it is uniquely qualified in its degree of expertise, independence, objectivity, and audience acceptance. The IOM is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative findings to decision makers and the public. The IOM is the only source that can provide the measure of expertise, independence, objectivity, and audience acceptance necessary to meet the program requirements for this workshop series and its resultant report. In addition to the unique characteristics and reputation of the IOM as the nation's gold-standard, Executive-Order recognized, source of unbiased and authoritative findings, the work under this contract will leverage and build upon the IOM Roundtable on Value and Science-Driven Healthcare's unparalleled expertise in the development of a learning healthcare system, including not only the Digital Infrastructure for the Learning Health System report resulting from the Electronic Infrastructure to Support a Learning Healthcare System workshop series to which it is a logical follow-on, but also reports produced by IOM separately from the prior ONC contract: "The Learning Healthcare System", "Redesigning the Clinical Research Paradigm", and "Engineering a Learning Healthcare System". The proposed requirement is for services the Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under the authority of Executive Order No. 12832, dated January 19, 1993 in conjunction with FAR 6.302-1, Authorized or required by statute. The Government intends on acquiring the service as a commercial item using simplified acquisition procedures. HHS anticipates the award of a firm fixed-price contract. Interested parties may identify their interest by responding to the requirement. Interested parties must submit their capabilities and qualifications to perform the effort in writing to the point of contact identified below not later than 3:00 p.m. EST/EDT on September 1, 2011. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed effort, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the Government. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. No solicitation is available. Responses must be received by close of business (3:00 PM EST/EDT) on September 1, 2011. Point of Contact: Nathaniel Mizzell, Contracts Specialist, Phone (301) 443-4379, Email your questions to Nathaniel Mizzell at Nathaniel.Mizzell@psc.hhs.gov.