RECOVERY: Health IT Standards Analysis

RECOVERY - THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR QUOTATIONS OR PROPOSALS. THIS IS A SOURCES SOUGHT SYNOPSIS FOR MARKET RESEARCH PURPOSES. INFORMATION RECEIVED WILL BE USED FOR MARKET RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS ORDER IS FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009. The Sources Sought notice is issued for information and planning purposes only. Any procurement that may result from this notice will be funded, in whole, or in part, by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) of 2009. No solicitation is currently available, and no unsolicited proposals will be entertained as a result of this Sources Sought notice. As a result of this market research, if at least two qualified small businesses are identified the resulting competitive procurement will be conducted as a small business set-aside. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this requirement is 541690; the small business size standard is $7 million. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking to identify those sources with the requisite qualifications and capabilities necessary to fully develop and execute a Health Information Technology (HIT) Standards Analysis project, as detailed below. The Health IT Standards Analysis Project supports the broader NIST Healthcare IT Testing Infrastructure Project. The objective of the Health IT Standards Analysis project is to focus resources on specific, national priority standards needs in the healthcare community to further clinical information exchange among providers, consumers, public health and other stakeholders. This project does not seek to select the standards that should be used by the healthcare community; it seeks to analyze those standards deemed appropriate by the healthcare community by objectively determining the maturity, robustness, testability and suitability of a particular standard for use (i.e., is it free from ambiguities, errors, inconsistencies, omissions, and to the extent possible, meet intended requirements). Additionally this project seeks to develop appropriate test material, data and standard-specific test tools for high priority national need standards for interoperability. Contractors are asked to develop: - a standard's suitability analysis, - conformance/interoperability testing material, - conformance/interoperability test data set, and - conformance/interoperability testing tool(s) For health IT standard(s) supporting a health IT focus (defined below as Task Areas). Each task may be awarded individually or a Contractor can group task areas. This provides the flexibility for NIST to award multiple contracts to this SOW for focused healthcare domain specific expertise. Contractors should consider the health IT and IT standards that will help support the goals of interoperability, security and quality in the healthcare domain. The term standards used above should be considered to include documentary specifications, profiles, interoperability specifications, constructs, implementation guides and certification criteria as used in any health IT-relevant, consensus-based private or public activity or organization. This would include standards referenced by the ANSI Health IT Standards Panel, (http://www.hitsp.org); include standards that may support federal efforts such as the Meaningful Use recommended standards and criteria, the Nationwide Health Information Network and other federal efforts focused on population health, public health, and clinical research; and include standards that may be significant in meeting the health IT standards priorities defined by the HHS/Office of the National Coordinator (see http://healthit.hhs.gov). HOW TO RESPOND TO THIS SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE The following information must be included in responses to the sources sought notice: 1. Provide a clear and concise narrative of current capabilities that will meet the needs of this effort. 2. Provide your organization's information (company name, address, business size, point of contact, telephone number, facsimile number, and electronic mail address) 3. Please identify the company's codes for NAICS. 4. Identify current General Supply Agency (GSA) contracts. NIST encourages responses from all responsible sources, including, but not limited to, small businesses, interested sources that believe they possess the capabilities necessary to undertake this project, should submit responses to this notice by electronic mail to Ms. Salina C. Alexander, Support Contractor/Senior Acquisition Specialist, at Salina.Alexander@nist.gov, with "CC" to Ms. Wanza B. Jonjo, at Wanza.Jonjo@nist.gov. Responses must be sent to arrive into inboxes, to the email addresses provided above, no later 3:00pm, EST, on January 6th, 2010.