Request for Information - Automation Dispensing System and Pill Packager IDIQ

Request for Information

36C10X27Q0002

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Healthcare Technology Management (HTM)

Inpatient Pharmacy Automation System (IPAS) suite and Automated unit dose repacking systems (Pill packaging system) Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite contract.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY (as defined in FAR 15.101(c)), this is not a solicitation, a solicitation is not available at this time. Requests for a solicitation will not receive a response. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received, provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted, or respond to any questions or comments that may be submitted in response to this RFI. This notice does not constitute a commitment by the United States Government and does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. Responders are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI.

The purpose of this RFI is for Market Research and to gather input for use in further defining the requirement only, and to identify interested and potentially capable vendors to fulfill requirements for:

1. An Indefinite Delivery-Indefinite contract for an enterprise procurement of Automated unit dose repacking systems (Pill packaging system) for inpatient pharmacies across the country. The procurement shall include the unit dose packager, supplemental lower packaging unit, tray system, cannisters, canister calibration system, all software and interfaces required to integrated into the existing pharmacy information system. The contract shall include all software and professional services required to install and operate the inpatient medication dispensing workflow to include interfaces, licenses, equipment relocations, enterprise reporting, and Electronic Health Record integration, as well as maintenance and support agreements.  It shall include VHA personnel training, technology refreshes, upgrades, additional components, architecture enhancements and licensing support as needed.

2. An Inpatient Pharmacy Automation System (IPAS) suite across the country. The suite of equipment includes automation dispensing cabinets, IV prep systems, carousels, refrigerators, auxiliary equipment and accessories.  The contract shall include all software and professional services required to install and operate the inpatient medication dispensing workflow to include interfaces, licenses, equipment relocations, enterprise reporting, and Electronic Health Record integration, as well as maintenance and support agreements.  It shall include VHA personnel training, technology refreshes, upgrades, additional components, architecture enhancements and licensing support as needed. 

The Contractor shall provide all equipment, supplies, transportation, tools, materials, supervision, and other items and non-personal services necessary to install and support the inpatient pharmacy automation system as defined in this Performance Work Statement (PWS), except for those items specified as government furnished property and services.

 Additionally, the Government aims to determine if this can be fulfilled under a single vehicle for executing the proposed tasks would be a viable pathway. The details of the system’s requirements and capabilities are found in:

Attachment A: Draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) - Automated Unit Dose Repacking Systems (Pill packaging system)

Attachment B: Draft Performance Work Statement (PWS)- Inpatient Pharmacy Automation Dispensing System

1. Background

VHA Office of Healthcare Technology Management (HTM), in conjunction with Pharmacy Benefits Administration (PBM), develops and guides the comprehensive management of pharmacy technologies to assure safe, available, and innovative medical technology used to deliver exceptional health care for Veterans.  HTM/Biomedical Engineering at the medical facilities direct the medical equipment management program and support clinical care through providing preventive and corrective maintenance, healthcare consulting, and professional services for the technology assessment, implementation and sustainment of medical equipment and clinical systems.

Planned Performance: End of First Quarter of Fiscal Year (FY) 27.

* The information provided in the RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR RESPONDING TO THIS RFI

CONFIDENTIALITY: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response.  The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).

Response Format/Page Limitations: 

In your capability statement, address how you would deliver/implement the specific tasks outlined in Attachment A and B. The overall total page limit for responses to this RFI is ten (10) pages.  (Page count excludes – General Information). Responses should be submitted in Microsoft Word format with 12 pt. Vendors may also submit additional information not specifically requested above, which would provide value and insight to the Government. NO MARKETING MATERIALS ARE ALLOWED AS PART OF THIS RFI. Generic capability statements will not be accepted or reviewed. Your response must address capabilities specific to the services required in the attached draft Requirements Document.

Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned. 

Please provide an index to assist the Government in identifying where you have addressed each question below in your Capabilities Statement.  Please provide question number corresponding page and section heading and/or paragraph number.

General Information section shall include the following at a minimum:

• Name, mailing address, overnight delivery address (if different from mailing address), phone number, fax number, and e-mail of designated point of contact.

Recommended Contract Type. Provide a recommended contract type and a justification supporting the use of a Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) arrangement in lieu of a Labor-Hour (LH) contract. The Government’s preference is for an FFP contract; therefore, respondents are requested to explain how the requirement can be sufficiently defined, scoped, and managed to enable performance under an FFP structure. The response should describe the conditions, assumptions, and risk mitigation approaches that would support successful execution under an FFP contract.

The number of pages in General Information Section shall not be included in the ten (10) page limit. The ten (10) page limit begins after the completion of General Information.

Reference “36C10X27Q0002 - Automation Dispensing System and Pill Packager IDIQ” in the response and Subject Line of the email).

Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed. Respondents are requested to limit responses to the information, and in the format provided below.

Companies are encouraged to include any relevant information (specifications, cut sheets, brochures, capability statement, previous experience etc.) to confirm the company’s ability to meet the requirements outlined in this request.

2. GENERAL INFORMATION

The following information is requested:

Administrative Information:

1. Company Name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail of designated point of contact.
2. Company Cage Code and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). Companies must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM, at www.sam.gov) to be considered as a potential source.
3. Indicate the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code(s) under which your company typically performs Government contracts. Maximum participation by small businesses, including veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone, small disadvantaged, and women-owned small business concerns, is encouraged. Suggested NAICS for this requirement is 339112 - Surgical and Medical Instrument Manufacturing.
4. Identify the applicable SINs, including a description of each SIN’s product or service classification. Suggested PSC is 6515 - Medical and Surgical Instruments, Equipment, and Supplies.
5. Small Business Designation status such as (8(a), HUBZone, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), Women-Owned, etc.). Business size status and time of last certification. The Government has not yet determined the set-aside capability. The results of this RFI will be used to assess small businesses’ capacity to fulfil this requirement and to inform the Government’s decision.
6. Identify which pieces of equipment you offer or identify if you can supply the entire portfolio of products.  
7. Identify any contracting vehicles available to the Government for procuring this equipment and services (e.g., GSA PSS, GSA OASIS, NASA SEWP, etc.). This information is for market research purposes only and does not preclude your company from responding to this notice.
8. Identify any products or services not manufactured in America.

3. CAPABILITY AND EXPERIENCE INFORMATION

Company Qualifications:

1. Describe your company’s capability to provide inpatient pharmacy automation systems to large, multi-facility healthcare enterprises, particularly within the Department of Veteran’s Affairs or other federal agencies.
2. Provide examples of projects where you have successfully integrated your system with an Electronic Health Record (EHR) such as Oracle Health, MHS Genesis or other products.  Please describe the hardware, software, and interface requirements to connect your systems with the EHR.    

Technical and System Capabilities-ADCs, Carousels, and IV prep:

1. What are the underlying operating systems for your server and client-side equipment? Please confirm they meet the minimum requirements of Windows Server 2019 and Windows 11 or identify your plan and proposed timeline for moving to these operating systems.
2. Does your latest system have a current Enterprise Risk Assessment (ERA)?  If not, what is your plan and estimated timeline for obtaining one?
3. Describe your system’s architecture. Is it a cloud-based, on-premises, or hybrid model?
4. Describe the system's inherent capability to maintain data integrity and transaction continuity during degraded or disconnected network operations.
5. What roles-based access are available to users?  What functionality can the role-based access provide? 
6. Please provide the specifications of your IV prep system.
7. Describe your system’s ability for a central pharmacy management or regional pharmacy management solutions—is it able to host individual sites to a single server located at another site—ie a single server to host 10+ facilities?  100+?  Are there limitations to this set-up? 
8. Is there any cross functionality between the inpatient pharmacy automation suite and the supply automation suite?  Can they leverage the same server or licenses?  If yes, what options are available for supply automation suites?
9. In the event of a power outage, what are the downtime protocols?  If there is a mechanical failure, please describe if your equipment can function manually and the protocols for such.    
10. Are the packaging, labels and other consumables proprietary or are they available open market (assuming meets specifications company provides)? 
11. For your commercially available support agreement options, please provide information regarding service response times. 
12. Are parts available independent of whether a support agreement is in place?  Are parts only support contracts available or the ability to schedule one-time repairs? 
13. Are there any equipment items or services that seem to be missing from the draft PWS?  Are there requirements that are not applicable to the inpatient suite set up? 

Technical and System Capabilities-Pill packager:

1. Provide your interface capabilities with inpatient automation vendors and identify whether this is one directional or bidirectional. 
2. What are the underlying operating systems for your server and client-side equipment? Please confirm they meet the minimum requirements of Windows Server 2019 and Windows 11 or identify your plan and proposed timeline for moving to these operating systems.
3. Does your latest system have a current Enterprise Risk Assessment (ERA)?  If not, what is your plan and estimated timeline for obtaining one?
4. Describe your system’s architecture. Is it a cloud-based, on-premises, or hybrid model?
5. Describe the system's inherent capability to maintain data integrity and transaction continuity during degraded or disconnected network operations.
6. What roles-based access are available to users?  What functionality can the role-based access provide? 
7. Please describe your cannister system and how new medications/new NDCs are configured?  Can it be done locally or does it require sending back to the OEM?  If it requires sending back to the OEM, what is the turnaround time options?
8. What are the various sizes of cannisters and amount of cannisters available in each pill packaging unit?  Are there recommendations by the vendor on which sized unit is needed where (ie if you do X, you should have at least Y size)?
9. How many unit dose and multi-dose forms can be packaged per minute?
10. Please describe your remote verification workflow.
11. In the event of a power outage, what are the downtime protocols?  If there is a mechanical failure, please describe if your equipment can function manually and the protocols for such.    
12. Are the packaging, labels and other consumables proprietary or are they available open market (assuming meets specifications company provides)? 
13. For your commercially available support agreement options, please provide information regarding service response times. 
14. What is the reported uptime of your system and how is it calculated? 
15. Are parts available independent of whether a support agreement is in place?  Are parts only support contracts available or the ability to schedule one-time repairs? 
16. Are there any equipment items or services that seem to be missing from the draft PWS?  Are there requirements that are not applicable to the inpatient pill packager? 

Demonstration Information:

1. The Government requests that vendors offer a virtual demonstration on teams or another virtual meeting platform specified and approved by the government of their current operational, production ready inpatient automation dispensing cabinet suite solution pill packaging solution. The demonstration should, to the maximum extent possible, illustrate the end-to-end workflow used to support high-volume healthcare or enterprise correspondence processing. The demonstration should address the following capabilities, if available:
   
   • New technologies offered in the last year
   • Interfaces between other brands’ products
   • Central Pharmacy Management from a single location or regional location
   • Labeling abilities to support moderate sedation without automation

 Schedule for Demonstration

• • 30-minute presentation technology and 30-minute demo with questions.
  • Respondent must provide sides deck at least 24 hours before scheduled demonstration.
  • Requesting demonstration between October 5 through 8, 2026, between 10:00AM-2:00PM EST.
  • Please provide best date and time for demonstration. Email confirmation will be sent to each respondent to confirm date and time for demonstration.

Interested firms are requested to provide Capability Statements addressing the following data/information requested by the closing date.

In addition to providing your company’s capability statement as it pertains to the requirements of this RFI, interested and capable firms are also required to provide answers to the following questions.

1. [ ] Yes [ ] No Does your company exceed the required number of employees/millions based on the appropriate NAICS the VA is requesting?  
2. [ ] Yes [ ] No Will at least 50 percent of the cost of performance incurred be expended for employees of your concern or employees of other eligible SDVOSB/VOSB concerns?

4.0 Responses

THERE IS NO SOLICITATION AT THIS TIME.

Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the U.S. Government to form a binding contract or agreement. This notice shall not be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation, or ultimately award a contract, nor does it restrict the Government to a particular acquisition approach. The Government will in no way be bound to this information if any solicitation is issued. Submission of any information in response to this market survey is purely voluntary; the Government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred. Your responses may be shared with all stakeholders, thus, information received will not be considered proprietary.

4.1. Responses: RFI responses are due no later than 10:00AM September 24, 2026, ET. Responses shall be submitted to: Contracting Officer – Caitlin Ruc at contact@example.gov and Contract Specialist – Tereshia Burford at contact@example.gov.

4.2.  Questions:  No Questions are being accepted. Depending upon the responses received, VA may request additional information, may conduct future question and answer sessions, or may conduct meetings or an industry day.

52.215-3 Request for Information or Solicitation for Planning Purposes (Oct 1997)

(a) The Government does not intend to award a contract based on this RFI or to pay for the information solicited except as an allowable cost under other contracts as provided in FAR subsection 31.205-18, Independent research and development and bid and proposal costs, of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

(b) Although “proposal” and “offeror” are used in this Request for Information, your response will be treated as information only. It shall not be used as a proposal.

(c) This Request is issued for the purpose of: Information Purpose Only.

(End of provision)

Please see Attachments:

A. DRAFT Performance Work Statement (PWS) - Automated unit dose repacking systems (Pill packaging system)

B. DRAFT Performance Work Statement (PWS) - Inpatient Pharmacy Automation Dispensing System

See Attachments for Complete detail of request.