National Library of Medicine, Office of Acquisitions Management, Building 38A, Room B1N17, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894

D -- BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS-NO1-LM-4-3507 POC Mary V. Adamik, Contracting Officer, 301-496-6546, email: mary_adamik@nih.gov. As part of the federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program, the National Library of Medicine awarded 12 contracts to apply advanced computing and communications technologies to a range of health care applications that included the development of testbed networks for linking hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, medical schools, medical libraries, and universities to enable health care providers and researchers to share medical data and imagery. These contracts were awarded under a Broad Agency Announcement whereby Statements of Work were proposed by competing organizations to satisfy broad research areas. The National Library of Medicine proposes to negotiate on a sole source basis with the University of Pittsburgh to add additional tasks to contract NO1-LM-4-3507 in order to allow for selected additional clinical use, evaluation and refinement of their Image Engine system that integrates access to clinical images (e.g., radiology, pathology) with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's large text-based patient record system. The additional tasks will allow more extensive and effective measurement of the impact of rapid integrated access to machine-readable patient data and images on clinical practice. Authority: 41 U.S.C. 253 (c)(1), as set forth in FAR 6.302-1. Unique capabilities for providing services, inherent duplication of cost to the government and unacceptable delays in completing this project make competition unfeasible for the final phase of the project. The University of Pittsburgh has developed the Image Engine system, has integrated it with the MARS text-based patient record system also previously developed and implemented at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and has conducted initial evaluations of its functionality and ease of use involving physicians in several clinical services, including the Division of Oncology and the Pittsburgh Cancer Center. As the developer of a novel system that can be used to evaluate the clinical impact of rapid and integrated access to patient images and textual information, the University of Pittsburgh is the only source able to deploy the Image Engine rapidly for routine clinical use in an oncology service, to refine the system as necessary to support such routine use, and to measure its clinical impact. Because the evaluation necessarily involves access to confidential patient information, it is most efficiently and safely done by the institution responsible for the care of the patients involved. See Numbered Note(s): 26 See Numbered Note(s): 22. (0141)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0020 19960521\D-0004.SOL)