The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) Informatics program has released this Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit bids from qualified applicants to: (a) evaluate the APHL Informatics Messaging Services (AIMS) electronic case reporting (eCR) platform on defined categories stated in the RFP, and (b) recommend strategies and solutions for process and performance improvement of the AIMS eCR.
Period of Performance
APHL will work closely with the successful awardee(s) to determine the period of performance based on a final agreed upon scope of work; however, the initial period of performance will have an end date of June 30, 2021. APHL may consider additional work orders post June 30, 2021, dependent upon funding availability, project direction, and awardee performance.
Eligibility
This is an open and competitive process.
Anticipated RFP Schedule
The following dates are set forth for informational and planning purposes. APHL will communicate any modification to this anticipated schedule on APHL's procurement website (www.aphl.org/rfp) and via email to all applicants that submitted a letter of intent.
Note: All due dates are 5:00 pm ET unless otherwise indicated
| December 15, 2020 | RFP Issued |
| December 21, 2020 | Informational Teleconference (Q&A) |
January 15, 2021
| Required Letter of Intent Due to APHL |
January 20, 2021
| Final Questions or Clarifications Due |
| February 5, 2021 | RFP Responses Due |
| February 8 – 19, 2021 | Proposal Review and Evaluation (follow-up interviews if needed) |
| February 26, 2021 | Final review completed, and awardee selected |
Communications
RFP Questions and Clarifications
This RFP is designed to provide the necessary information applicants need to prepare competitive proposals for the work described; it is not intended to be comprehensive. Each vendor is responsible for determining all the factors and information necessary to submit a comprehensive bid proposal to APHL.
Vendors are invited to submit questions and requests for clarification regarding the RFP. All communication should be in the form of an email submitted to the identified APHL email address:
informatics@aphl.org.
Questions and requests for clarification must be in writing and received by close of business on
January 20, 2021.
APHL Email Contact
APHL requests that applicants refrain from phone calls or verbal RFP questions and clarification requests except when specifically initiated by APHL staff.
APHL will manage all RFP communication with applicants through a central email inbox. Applicants will send all questions, clarification requests, and
letters of intent to
informatics@aphl.org.
RFP Materials
The Official RFP Document will provide detailed information, please read it on its entirety. APHL will post all RFP-related documents, current schedule information, and answers to submitted questions and clarifications on APHL's procurement site,
www.aphl.org/rfp.
RFP Page Limit and Formatting Specifications
An applicant's proposal must be limited to 15 pages of narrative and visuals. If an application exceeds this 15-page limit, only the first 15 pages will be sent to the evaluation team, and review scores will be based solely on the portion of the proposal submitted for review.
An application should have a font size of 11 points or larger and page margins of at least 0.5 inches.
Informational Teleconference
APHL held an informational teleconference on December 21, 2020 at 3:00 pm ET. The call provided potential applicants with an opportunity to ask APHL and CDC partners clarifying questions ahead of the required letter of intent.
A
presentation was shared during the teleconference and answers to questions posed during the session are provided below in the Questions and Answers section.
APHL requests that potential applicants send additional questions to
informatics@aphl.org as these questions arise.
Response Submission Deadlines
APHL will follow the anticipated RFP schedule unless otherwise modified on APHL's procurement site
http://www.aphl.org/rfp. Applicants must meet three important submission deadlines related to this RFP. The letter of intent email, final response submission and revised or updated submission. Applicants who submit proposals in advance of the deadline may withdraw, modify, and resubmit proposals at any time prior to the indicated deadline.
Letter of Intent
Applicants must submit a letter of intent, via email, to
informatics@aphl.org. APHL must receive the letter of intent email no later than 5:00 pm ET on January 15, 2021.
To allow for appropriate review process planning, APHL requires that prospective applicants submit a brief email statement indicating an intent to submit an RFP response along with the identity and contact details of the responsible party.
Final Submissions
Applications Due: February 5, 2021 | 5:00 pm ET
APHL must receive complete applicant responses no later than 5:00 pm ET on February 5, 2021. Applicants should send submissions to informatics@aphl.org, with a copy to Leslie McElligott, specialist, Informatics (leslie.mcelligott@aphl.org). It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that the proposal is delivered to APHL by this deadline. Applicants must address the required proposal elements for the response to qualify as "complete." APHL may terminate or modify the RFP process at any time during the response period. APHL will acknowledge the receipt of the applicant's complete RFP response via e mail within 48 hours of submission. If you do not receive an acknowledgment please email
informatics@aphl.org to confirm receipt.
Questions and Answers
Question on orders of magnitude and growth: Do you have orders of magnitude in the growth projections for the messages and message types? Is there quantity in different types as well?
A: Growth projection:
Absolute numeric quantification of the projected growth is difficult to provide at this point considering the various stages of implementation of the vendors and also dependencies on many other factors.
A significant scale up in implementation activities by vendors is projected to happen in the near future/upcoming months. In addition, EHRs have been approached to understand their current aspirations for implementation and half of the vendors approached indicated they are on a path forward towards achieving that goal.
Currently, primary triggering of the conditions /codes for the eICR is happening for COVID -19. All the trigger codes are available for the other 89 plus conditions. Triggering for all the conditions that have been authored, will begin very soon which will result in increased number of messages received from the providers. However, as COVID-19 gets contained, this number is anticipated to balance out.
Different types of messages
Since the context is electronic Case Reporting, primary messages that are received and processed are eCRs (version 1.1 of the HL7 standard at this point). Based on HL7 3.0 (currently in the works) there will be some changes, which may be a CDA document with additional content and the structure of RR. There are two different messages that are received. They are processed and pass through the eICRs. Both of them contribute to the messages and traffic that are sent. The RRs don’t change. This is the structure/process that is currently in place. There are plans to do the FHIR payloads submission in future. However, the tasks on the discovery of the work, effort, roadmap in this regard may be conducted by the awardee of the RFP.
Question on validation rules and the services: As the messages come in and potentially get rejected – how are they changed and how are those incorporated?
A: The primary stakeholder in eCR (CSTE, CDC, APHL) are involved in the validation piece of the service. In this regard, focus is on validation and flow-through of the usable information. During review of a CDA, different messages from many different providers, for the same EHR are received, which often may include potential schema violations and similar such issues. Therefore, the team essentially conducts cross checking of the schema violations. During the onboarding and validation process with the vendors, the eCR team works with the vendors to help them capable of eliminate schema violations and help correct any such similar issues with their messages in their test environment, to ensure those issues don’t get replicated in the production environment. The team also continue to provide support to monitor and mitigate such issues in future. There are mostly content rules on the Schematron section. The team conducts a validation process, based on patient address, provider address. An example of a fatal issue would be omission of the patient address or one of the three facility addresses, which would be cross-checked in the message. Most of the messages will go through unless there are fatal errors and severe warnings.
Are these cPT codes or ICD 10 or both?
A: Problems and diagnosis are triggered off codes that are ICD or SNOMED. Lab tests results and orders are triggered off LOINC codes for the lab test(s), SNOMED for organism substance (not being used in COVID-19 related results currently). Capability and standards to trigger on test order (s) exist. However current implementations are not doing that at present.
Are these requirements driven by what the reporting agencies want to have? Or are there gaps on the reports they are receiving? What are the drivers for the condition list? Is this primarily based on customer demand?
A:Customer demand is an important factor. The stakeholders work with the content team who author the next set of conditions, which is driven by a lot of conditions that are notifiable to CDC by the States and the jurisdictions and most of these notifications are required by law. This is a multi-stakeholder project where stakeholders like CSTE, CDC have been working on the RCKMS rules. The trigger codes are derivative of those rules and they are closely tied to each other. The important points in this context are-
- What is required to be reported by law at the state level for different states
- What conditions are reportable according to the state law (for the state in question), associated with notifications going to CDC
- It is not about these notifications but about the set of conditions that CSTE and CDC agree upon RCKMS project is now working on reportable conditions that are not necessarily nationally notifiable but are being implemented in some jurisdictions. The eCR team is moving towards full implementation of all the different conditions and the numbers for that will reach over 100 in not-so-distant future.
Is APHL expecting the cost proposal to be submitted as Fixed Price, or Time and Materials?
A:Fixed Price is strongly preferred for the initial period of performance, however it not required. Vendors may use a time and materials approach to estimate any work proposed under the Optional Task.
In the Period of Performance, it states the initial period of performance will end on June 30, 2021, with an expected award date of February 26, 2021 in the Anticipated RFP Schedule section. However, the Funding Information section states that “a maximum compensation amount of $300,00 for the first six months of this contract.” Is the period of performance 4 months or 6 months?
Note: A similar question was submitted by another bidder:“Please clarify if expected project duration is four or six months” The following answer applies to both submitted questions.
A:The initial period of performance must end on June 30, 2021 to match APHL’s cooperative agreement funding cycle. However, if your proposed approach (not including the optional task) to meet the goals outlined in the
Assessment of eCR Scalability and Resilience RFP will extend beyond June 30, 2021, we ask that you clearly indicate the deliverables and costs APHL can expect on or before June 30 versus those post June 30. The optional task period will not begin before July 1st, 2021 and must end on or before June 30, 2022.
Are the cover page, cover letter and cost proposal counted in the 15 page limit?
For the Optional Task cited on page 8, is the submitter expected to provide pricing for the optional task? If so, what scope criteria should be used for pricing given that the scope will be linked to the main deliverables of the technical assessment?
A:Yes, if you choose to respond to the optional task, APHL expects an initial cost proposal. The final scope of the optional task will be based on the outcome(s) of the primary RFP work. As such, APHL expects vendors to use a time and materials approach to estimating this work. APHL and the selected vendor will have an opportunity to negotiate on the optional task cost and approach following the initial period of performance. See RFP excerpt below for additional information:
“Award of the optional task will depend on vendor’s performance on the primary task, APHL’s review and approval. APHL reserves the right to not exercise the optional task with the awardee for this RFP and may issue a separate RFP for this task. Award for this optional task will also depend on availability of funds at that time.”
Please clarify if expected project duration is four or six months
A:The initial period of performance must end on June 30, 2021 to match APHL’s cooperative agreement funding cycle. However, if your proposed approach (not including the optional task) to meet the goals outlined in the
Assessment of eCR Scalability and Resilience RFP will extend beyond June 30, 2021, we ask that you clearly indicate the deliverables and costs APHL can expect on or before June 30 versus those post June 30. The optional task period will not begin before July 1st, 2021 and must end on or before June 30, 2022.
Can full resumes of proposed staff be included in an appendix outside of the 15 page limit?
A:Yes. Additionally, the cover page, cover letter and cost proposal do not count towards the 15-page limit.
Are the evaluation criteria required for this Response?
- Describe how the bidder will work with the Agency of Education program manager to ensure successful evaluation outcomes.
- Approach to address functional requirements, system requirements: security requirements.
- Approach to training, documentation.
A: The evaluation criteria section provides bidders a general view of the criteria the RFP evaluation team will use to fairly grade and assess all RFP submissions. Prospective vendors are not expected to directly respond to these criteria, they are for informational purposes. Clarification provided below for the three criteria directly:
Describe how the bidder will work with the Agency of Education program manager to ensure successful evaluation outcomes.
A:This line should have read: “Describes how the bidder will work with
the APHL eCR management team to ensure successful project outcomes” we apologize for any confusion.
Approach to address functional requirements, system requirements: security requirements
A:The evaluation team will use these criteria to assess proposed approaches to meet goals under the Optional Task. In addition, this criteria may be used to assess proposed approaches to meet the deliverables outlined under the header “Recommendation of Strategies for Improvement and Technical Solutions” (pg. 8).
Approach to training, documentation
A:The evaluation team will use these criteria to assess any proposed approaches to meet the deliverables outlined under the header “Recommendation of Strategies for Improvement and Technical Solutions” (pg. 8).