Public Health Surveillance Data & Data Svcs

General Information Document Type: Special Notice Tracking Number: FBO-SS-B6-10001 Posted Date: 7-22-2010 Original Response Date: 8-6-2010 Current Response Date: 8-6-2010 Original Archive Date: Current Archive Date: Classification Code: Q-Medical Svc Naics Code: 923120 Contracting Office Address Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Procurement and Grants Office (Atlanta), 2920 Brandywine Road, Room 3000, Atlanta, GA, 30341-4146, UNITED STATES Description SUMMARY: This is a request for information only. It is not a request for proposals and does not commit the Government to issue a solicitation, make an award, or pay any costs associated with responding to this announcement. All submitted information shall remain with the Government and will not be returned. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are seeking to evaluate commercial data products and services that are suitable for use in addressing the broad array of CDC requirements for public health surveillance and health services monitoring information. BACKGROUND: Recent changes in how health-related information is processed from the point of clinical encounter are having an impact on how public health conducts surveillance for health outcomes, exposures, and preventive health services. For example, over the past 15 years, public health programs have begun to monitor less-specific, pre-diagnostic health syndrome information earlier in the disease process to enhance preparedness and response and augment less timely, more specific laboratory-confirmed health outcome data. In addition, as analytical techniques evolve to utilize electronic data for quality of care assessment and improving patient access to health care services and health information, public health practitioners should collaborate to ensure efficient and effective sharing of data and novel analytical techniques. Blossoming investment in electronic health data systems is certain to lead to an increase in patient record-level and aggregated data that can be used for population health monitoring and other types of public health studies at all levels of public health. The federal government continues to promote electronic medical record (EMR) and health information exchange (HIE) implementations and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars under Recovery Act funding toward ... supporting public health agencies' authorized use of and access to electronic health information". There are numerous private sector health data vendors who have come to realize the rich information to be found in EMRs generated via clinical encounters. An example of this is how the Pharma industry supports the health data vendor sector by using the data as evidence for successful R&D and marketing of new medical products. The same accessible information can also be used by public health programs to deliver more evidence-focused preventive health services; and consequently increasing quality of life. Additional sources of readily available spontaneously generated health monitoring data will be available in more standardized forms, with substantial consequences for enhancing public health surveillance activities of all types, including surveillance of chronic and infectious diseases, immunizations, occupational hazards, pharmaceutical use and risks, environmental exposures, etc. The most intensive stages of this data availability growth have yet to be realized. As a consequence of the H1N1 emergency pandemic response, CDC engaged with several new business partners for acquiring health-related data. These supplementary data providers have a variety of products and services relevant to public health (data, data extraction tools, analytic tools, data visualization tools, etc.). There is likely a wealth of services from which CDC can benefit in its work throughout the private sector data exchange market. This RFI is designed to enable exchange of information regarding commercial health-related data products and services between vendors and CDC programs which may benefit from new and evolving data services now provided by numerous potential partners. DESCRIPTION: At the very root of successful and effective disease control and prevention is an informed understanding of population health dynamics based on the sound scientific interpretation of evidence. Frequently, such evidence must be developed from raw data before it can be used for making decisions, determining policy and conducting programs. However, the work of building evidence for sound decisions in public health practice--doing the right thing at the right time--is largely hidden from view. It involves many highly technical disciplines and a complex professional organization to coordinate interpretation and public health response. CDC, with its public health partners, has an obligation to (1) introduce new data types useful for surveillance, (2) develop improved ways to access and utilize health-related data, (3) develop tools to assist in the application of data management, analysis or visualization methods, (4) test methodologies and tools and (5) provide consultation for practitioners who seek to access health-related data or apply the methods. Although evidence is often based on "hard" quantitative data that have been deliberately and systematically collected to be representative of a population of interest, data are often otherwise acquired through non-probability samples where defining the population represented is a challenge. The wide-scale implementation of electronic information systems has had a substantial impact on professional practices within the public health community. Among the factors impacting public health practice are the increased generation and availability of data. There are data systems for collecting sentinel disease reports; spontaneous adverse event reports related to exposure to drugs, vaccines and other medical products; as well as information systems designed for various - other' purposes (e.g., prescription pharmaceuticals, laboratory orders or results, medical encounters, inventory and marketing, over-the-counter pharmaceutical sales, emergency service dispatches) all of which produce data that can potentially augment evidence for monitoring and assessing the health of populations. The data generated from such systems do not readily lend themselves to well defined sample/population relationships. There is no clear - sampling design' from which to determine how well the data represent a target population. Applications for analyzing data in such settings are empirical in nature in that interpretation of these data and subsequent implications are not well informed by theory and must be acquired through experience by engaged and invested public health professionals. Public health still relies strongly on data collected in specifically designed surveys or in deliberate record-by-record surveillance data collection settings, although changing communication technologies (e.g. cell phones, internet telecommunications, etc.) introduce complexities into traditional survey methods that can result in biased data. These data are analyzed using time-tried statistical methodologies, but these techniques do not address the impact of new communication technologies upon traditional surveillance. There is also a wealth of data that could potentially provide information on public health indicators that goes largely unexploited, because methods for accessing, analyzing and utilizing the data are less mature in their development. One example is the data extracted from electronic medical records (EMRs) and interchanged with health information exchanges (HIEs). More and more, public health surveillance and research are turning to these types of data sources to augment traditional surveillance activities. Analyzing and understanding spontaneously generated EMR data is very different from analyzing and understanding survey data. The need to combine data and information from multiple sources adds a layer of complexity to the analytic process; as does consideration of the breadth of scale from community to federal levels of relevance. Also, file linkage for maintaining longitudinal records for the same patient over time, though analytically complex has enormous potential for understanding utilization and effectiveness of health services. This RFI is for demonstrations of the value for data provisioning in the context described above. CDC maintains a rigorous requirement to base program and policy decisions on evidence from data that can be clearly and completely validated, described and replicated. CDC acknowledges the time, effort, professional skill requirements and costs of information exchange. However, CDC's evidence-based responsibilities to public health do not relate to treating data as a fungible commodity. RESPONSE: Information obtained from this RFI will be used by CDC in refining strategy for the acquisition of surveillance data used in population health evaluation or ongoing monitoring. Interested organizations that have candidate data products and services are invited to submit a written response to CDC and will be given an opportunity to make a 1-2 hour (including Q&A time) CDC-wide announced presentation tentatively scheduled for September. A definitive date and time for the CDC-wide presentations will be provided to those interested organizations at a later date. Responses should be limited to 12 pages (not including slides to be used for and in-person presentation). As a minimum, responses should include: - A description of the respondent's data products with respect to contents, geographic, temporal and demographic coverage and data detail granularity. - A general description of the setting(s) in which the data are generated (e.g. during an outpatient visit or purchase of prescription medication) and the workflow between data collection and data delivery to business partners, to include relevant business relationships and organizational authorities. - A description of the timeliness of data transmitting capability, including data transmission frequency and average lag time between data generation and data record delivery to business partners. - A description of the technologies supporting the proposed approach; and whether these technologies/platforms/software programs are proprietary or not. - A description, demonstration and/or comparison addressing data quality, including data quality assurance and problem resolution processes at data aggregator if aggregator is not the original data collector. - A description of the technical support available to business partner data managers, analysts, and researchers investigating clinical issues or operational issues regarding health care data collection. - A listing of the categories of prices and estimates of those price requirements based on skill sets, time and effort requirements to deliver data. REMINDER: This is not a request for proposals. Supporting cost data is not required nor requested. Any pricing data provided, including estimates, is informational only. This request for information is an aspect of market research only. No award will be made based on this synopsis. Providing cost information is optional. All written responses submitted to CDC outside of any open presentation will be kept confidential as allowed by relevant federal law, including the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC 552) and the Trade Secrets Act (18 USC 1905). Responses must be submitted by 12:00 (noon) on Friday, August 6, 2010 to Penny Lyle Holley, Contracting Officer, at email pholley@cdc.gov. Point of Contact PGO POC contact information: Penny Lyle Holley - pholley@cdc.gov Place of Performance Address: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Public Health Surveillance Program Office (PHSPO) 1600 Clifton Road Atlanta, GA Postal Code: 30329 Country: UNITED STATES