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

R -- HEALTH RELATED TERMINOLOGY VOCABULARY TEST SOL NLM 96-047/DJH POC Daniel J. Hartinger, Contract Specialist, 301/496-6546. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) are sponsoring a test to determine the extent to which a combination of existing health-related terminologies cover vocabulary needed in health information systems. The test vocabularies are the 30 vocabularies and classifications fully or partially represented in the 1996 edition of the UMLS Metathesaurus plus three planned additions to the Metathesaurus: 1) the portions of SNOMED International not in the 1996 Metathesaurus, 2) the Read Clinical Classification, and 3) LOINC (Logical Observations Identifiers, Names, and Codes). The primary purpose of these projects is to determine whether sets of terms and concepts needed for diverse real health data systems and applications are present in the test vocabularies. Projects must result in test data for at least 1,000 discrete concepts. Test participants will search the test set for controlled vocabulary needed for their specific purposes and send standard electronic records to NLM describing what they find and do not find. Testers will use a special Web interface to the UMLS Knowledge Source Server for interactive or ''batch'' processing of groups of terms. A sample interaction with this interface may be viewed from the ''New & Noteworthy'' section of NLM's Web site (http://www.nlm.nih.gov). Offerors must meet the following four (04) mandatory qualification criteria in order to be considered for award: 1) offerors must have a permanent IP address and a high speed Internet connection (minimum 64 kilobytes per second (before compression) corresponding to one B channel of an ISDN link). Modem access is not recommended, 2) offerors must have, or demonstrate the ability to obtain within the time frame required to complete work by December 31, 1996, a computer workstation equivalent to a 100 MHz pentium or better and the latest version of Netscape, 3) offerors must have identified at least 1,000 discrete health-related concepts to be searched in the test interface (these concepts may not be taken from any of the source vocabularies included in the test set), and 4) offerors must identify specific people who are available to do the work within the short time period of the project. The Government reserves the right to make multiple awards. It is anticipated that between eight (8) and ten (10), fixed-price purchase orders will be awarded, each for a three (03) month period of performance from the date of award. Request for Quotations (RFQ) NLM 96-047/DJH will be available approximately fifteen (15) days after publication of this notice. This RFQ will be available in electronic format only. Paper copies will not be issued. The RFQ may be downloaded from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Gopher, or the NLM Home Page on the World Wide Web. The NLM Gopher address is ''gopher.nlm.nih.gov'' at ''port 70'' (select NLM Acquisitions (RFPs and RFQs), select NLM Requests for Quotations (RFQs), select NLM RFQ 96-047/DJH). The NLM Home Page URL is ''http://www.nlm.nih.gov/'' (select Grants & Contracts, select Requests for Quotations (RFQs), select RFQ NLM 96-047/DJH: Health-Related Terminology Vocabulary Test). All responsible sources may submit a proposal which will be considered by the National Library of Medicine. (0185)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0084 19960705\R-0001.SOL)