Purpose  

The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) Informatics program has released this Request for Proposal (RFP) to solicit bids from qualified applicants to conduct a discovery effort to determine business needs and requirements to create an informatics solution for linkage of WGS data with other traditional laboratory data generated for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. This is needed in order to support surveillance efforts and public health decision making at local, regional and international levels for bacterial enteric pathogens. 

Anticipated RFP Schedule 

Note: All due dates are 5:30 pm ET unless otherwise indicated 

Activity   Date  Mechanism 
Project opportunity released March 28, 2024 APHL procurement site www.aphl.org/rfp 
Communicate intent to submit a proposal April 8, 2024  Send an email to paul.jankauskas@aphl.org and cc: rebecca.abelman@aphl.org 
RFP Questions Ongoing  Send an email to paul.jankauskas@aphl.org and cc: rebecca.abelman@aphl.org 
Proposal submission deadline April 28, 2024  Send an email to paul.jankauskas@aphl.org and cc: Rebecca.abelman@aphl.org 

Submission Guidelines  

Responses must be sent to APHL by e-mail attachment in MSWord or PDF format (electronic signatures accepted) to Paul Jankauskas, Manager, Informatics at paul.jankauskas@aphl.org with a cc: to rebecca.abelman@aphl.org. E-mail attachment is the preferred means of receipt.  E-mail responses must be received by 5:30 pm (U.S. eastern time) on April 28, 2024.  Submitters will receive a confirmation of receipt of their proposal by APHL.  APHL may terminate or modify the RFP process at any time during the response period.  

Responses that are not received by the stated deadline shall be determined to be non-responsive and at APHL's discretion may not be considered in the review of respondents.   

Contractor information required to be included with response.  

  1. Full legal name  
  1. Authorized representative of the Contractor for the proposal.  
  1. Telephone, fax and e-mail address of the single point of contact for communication between APHL and the contractor. Contact information for other persons whom the contractor may request informational copies sent in addition to the single point of contact.  
  1. Business mailing address. 

Details and format 

  • Limited to twelve (12) pages of narrative and corresponding visuals  
  • Font size of 11 points or larger  
  • Page margins of at least 0.5 inches  

Please include the following content with your submission.  

  1. Proposal narrative: outlining the proposed discovery and requirements project approach and demonstrating an understanding of the scope of the work to be performed.  
  1. Budget and Payment Terms: Budget proposals should be submitted using a total fixed price; but should not exceed $175,000 without justification.  Applicants should include a proposed payment schedule that aligns with the key project milestones and deliverables outlined in the RFP. This can be presented in a table form with the following: Milestone/deliverable, percentage of total value, proposed payment timing.   
  1. *Proposed project team members: Respondents should submit an appendix with all proposed team member's resumes and should include a section in the proposal narrative aligning each proposed team member's role and responsibilities to the overall project approach.  
  1. Relevant project experience: respondents should include a description of their relevant experience implementing and supporting similar projects (up to 4). Please draw attention to public health laboratories worked with globally and domestically; informatics, AR and NGS projects, and requirements gathering. 

*Note that cost proposals and staff resumes may be submitted as supplemental material and do not count towards the 12-page limit. 

RFP Materials

APHL will post all RFP-related documents, current schedule information and answers to all submitted questions and clarifications on APHL's procurement site, The official RFP document will provide detailed information in regards to this request, please read it in its entirety. 

Questions and Answers

Considering there are over 80+ countries that use Pulsenet can we assume that the scope of this project will only look at a set of 6 countries from the Asian-Pacific WGS feasibility project?

A main deliverable is the analysis of the surveillance platform to support Pulsenet WGS data integration.  Is the target focus for primarily the NARMS and GLASS surveillance systems for the gap analysis and variance across countries or will this include other AR surveillance platforms?

Can the technical requirements be generalized or specifically declared for each country examined? We know there will be variance in LIMS and other technical capability across countries.

Will it be appropriate to describe the generalized approaches for case linkage in the analysis for lab data workflows to aggregate a series of specimen results in the surveillance systems as part of the requirements?

Is it assumed this WGS analysis is only for Human-based enteric entities and not inclusive of other organisms (like cows) thus expanding the laboratory methods and information description requirements for each specimen? This is asked because AR surveillance scope of One-Health encompasses all organisms.

Does this budget cover any expenses for travel to any of the target country labs?

In the information provided it states that a landscape analysis will need to be performed across 6-8 countries. Does this we would need to assess 6-8 laboratories total, with each in a different country or will multiple laboratories be assessed in each country?

The RFP specifies that respondents should include a description of their relevant experience implementing and supporting similar projects. Do these past performance descriptions count towards the 12-page limit, or can these be included as an appendix to the proposal?