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D -- BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS-NO1-LM-4-3516 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 Oregon Health Sciences University to add additional tasks to contract N01-LM-4-3516 in order to allow for selected additional use abd evaluation of their network. The additional tasks will allow more effective evaluation and measurement of the use of teledermatology in 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 Oregon Health Sciences University has developed a rural testbed network for remote diagnosis of skin lesions via teleconsultation to underserved rural areas in primary care clinics in Oregon. The network and its standards, protocols and technical systems is now established and providing teleconsultations to physicians in remote areas of Oregon and capturing data for evaluation. The Oregon Health Sciences University is the only source that can rapidly and efficiently (1) extend this network to additional selected clinical sites, (2) improve and test new technical methods within the current system and (3) perform additional evaluation and tests of system capabilities. Because the evaluation necessarily involves access to confidential patient information, it is most efficiently and safely done by the institution responsible for care of the patients involved. See Numbered Note(s): 26. See Numbered Note(s): 22. (0141)

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