SOLICITATION NOTICE
R -- Professional Services
- Notice Date
- 11/23/2005
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 519190
— All Other Information Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD, 20894
- ZIP Code
- 20894
- Solicitation Number
- 06-035-CYC
- Response Due
- 12/8/2005
- Archive Date
- 12/23/2005
- Description
- It is the intent of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to procure professional services from University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii (Dr. Joshua Jacobs) on a sole source basis. Period of Performance will be for a 6 month period beginning from the date of award. Professional services are required over a 6-month period to generate data for explicit process evaluation and technology assessment of the use of a handheld computer application, MD on Tap for real-time access to MEDLINE to answer clinical questions raised at the point of service, evaluation of the ability of the MD on Tap application to be an effective interface to MEDLINE in clinical settings, and evaluation of the role of MEDLINE in answering such questions. Specifically, two or more trained medical Residents under the supervision of a medical educator are required to accompany medical teams on teaching rounds, recognize and describe the clinical scenario, the clinical questions raised, search MEDLINE for answers to the questions using MD on Tap and indicate those MEDLINE citations that are relevant to the question. In addition, facilities in which to conduct the data generation are required, specifically a clinical care teaching environment associated with a medical school. The environment shall have access to a variety of clinical care scenarios, questions generated from the teaching environment, and Internet network service at the point of care via a wireless (802.11b/g compatible or cell phone connected) infrastructure. The medical Residents shall have broad medical expertise adequate to describe and categorize medical scenarios, recognize questions arising in the clinical care environment, formulate search terms and conditions related to the questions, and search the MEDLINE citation database for potential answers to the questions raised. Proposed Work: The fieldwork will be conducted by two or more Medical Residents from the Joan A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM), University of Hawaii, for a total of 8 or more person-weeks of data generation. Each Resident shall conduct the following sub-tasks: 1) Training: Learn to use the MD on Tap client on a PDA or PDA/cell phone. Become proficient in using the application for searching MEDLINE for citations that contain information relevant to answering clinical questions raised at the point of service. Become familiar with all its functions. Become proficient in using the notes function to record necessary reminders of the clinical scenario. Learn to use the transaction review program to assist in writing the daily summaries. 2) Fieldwork: Accompany JABSOM medical teams on teaching rounds for 4 weeks (20 days), not as a member of the medical team, but as an observer. Make note of all clinical scenarios and clinical questions using the MD on Tap notes function. Use MD on Tap to search for citations that address any clinical questions that arise at the point of care, excluding questions concerning individual patient data. Use the save function of MD on Tap to identify those citations that are judged to be relevant to the question. The Residents will record the questions and search for answers even when the Resident already knows the answer. It is expected that the Residents explore all of the features of the MD on Tap application in order to access the usefulness of each. 3) Daily Summaries: Submit by email to the NLM MD on Tap team daily summaries of the scenarios, clinical questions (or PICO), EBM task category, who asked the question, MEDLINE searches, relevant citations (PMIDs) and comments. The summaries will be in an Excel spreadsheet that contains these fields: Approximate time, scenario, Question or PICO, Who asked, EBM task category, Relevant PMIDs, Comments. These will be reviewed and corroborated by MD on Tap personnel. The Residents will be available, at times to be determined, to consult with MD on Tap personnel to discuss any ambiguous associations or confusing elements of the summary. 4) Final Report: Following the 4-weeks of use, prepare a final report that will include a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the ability to find relevant evidence in MEDLINE using MD on Tap at the point of care, a discussion of the features of MEDLINE searching (for example: limits, clinical queries), and the current features of MD on Tap (for example: history, EBM clusters) that are most useful for quickly finding useful citations, and any additional features that could facilitate that process. All Residents will be mentored by JABSOM faculty Dr. Joshua Jacobs. Dr. Jacobs will be responsible for coordinating the work of the JABSOM personnel involved in the study, for supervision of the Residents in the training, fieldwork and reporting phases of the study. Dr. Jacobs will insure technical support and access to medical facilities and teams on teaching rounds during the study. The rationale for requiring the fieldwork to take place during teaching rounds is to insure an environment in which the Residents are exposed to numerous and varied clinical scenarios wherein clinical questions are raised. It is expected that the Residents will be sufficiently knowledgeable in clinical medicine, in the practice of Evidence based Medicine and in the use of MD on Tap to be able to recognize all potential clinical questions, be able to generate suitable MEDLINE queries to find citations relevant to the clinical question and be able to determine which citations are relevant to answering the questions or are for articles that are likely to be relevant. Thus the Residents can accompany the teams on rounds without requiring interaction with the team members, either to understand the question or access the relevance of the citations. Technical Support: The Residents must have full time access to a Palm OS or PocketPC-based PDA. The PDA device may be a wireless PDA-only platform, such as a Tungsten C or an HP iPAQ, or it may be a PDA/cell phone with Internet access, such as a Treo 650. There must be a mechanism to guarantee that the Residents will have wireless access to the Internet during the teaching rounds and at the point of care. The access may be via 802.11x Local Area Network, or via a cell phone service provider. The chosen device must be provided by the Residents or by JABSOM. Approximate Schedule: a) Training Schedule: The time spent in training will depend upon the Residents' previous experience using PDAs and his/her learning speed. It is expected that the Residents will achieve proficiency in using MD on Tap prior to beginning the fieldwork phase. Proposed training interval: December 1-31, 2005. b) Field Work Schedule: Four weeks constituting the JABSOM Medical Informatics Elective, or an equivalent number of days. The objective is to record many actual clinical scenarios. Proposed dates: January through March, 2006. c) Final Report Schedule: The final report to NLM is due within two weeks of the end of the fieldwork. Proposed date: March, 2006. The NLM MD on Team will provide: a) Training assistance, if needed. NLM can supply examples of clinical questions and MD on Tap searches. NLM can supply documentation for using MD on Tap, and will provide one-on-one assistance via email or teleconferencing in the use of MD on Tap. b) A special version of MD on Tap tailored to support the fieldwork. The special version will support the use of a UserID that will be transmitted with each MD on Tap transaction. The special version will include a Notes function wherein the Resident fieldworker can record and send freeform notes regarding clinical scenarios and questions. These can be used to assist in preparing the daily summaries, as will be explained in the next paragraph. c) A special transaction review program to assist in preparing the daily summaries. This web-based program is to be run on a desktop computer. It displays in chronological order a review of all transactions for the given UserID, including the day and time of the transaction. These transactions include the optional Notes, the MEDLINE searches, and any citations that were viewed on the PDA. The display includes hyperlinks to PubMed to re-do the search, or to view the citation, and hyperlinks to the full text of a citation, if the full URL is available. Communications: Because of the six hour time difference between Maryland and Hawaii, all parties are expected to rely heavily on frequent email exchanges to inform each other of progress or problems. These will be supplemented by occasional telephone discussions or teleconferences. If there are gaps in or unexplained interruptions of the regular use of MD on Tap or daily summaries, the Residents and/or Dr, Jacobs will contact the MD on Tap Team within 36 hours of the interruption with a justification. REQUIRED TASKS The work described in the Proposed Work section shall be completed. The subtasks for each Resident are summarized here: Task description Subtask 1: If necessary, learn to use MD on Tap to search MEDLINE. Learn to use all of its functions. Learn to use the transaction tracking software. Subtask 2: Round with teaching teams, recording all scenarios and clinical questions, using MD on Tap to search for answers to the questions, mark relevant MEDLINE citations. Subtask 3: Submit daily summaries my email to the MD on Tap team of the activities conducted in subtask 2, organized into the fields named above in an Excel spreadsheet. Subtask 4: Write and submit a final report, including an overall evaluation of the MD on Tap system. Evaluation criteria for contract award : 1) A Professor of Medicine with experience conducting research, experience in medical informatics and experience in the incorporation of portable computing technology into the teaching and practice of medicine, who can supervise two or more residents in conducting fieldwork and insure both technical support and access to medical facilities and teams on teaching rounds. 2) Two or more individuals with medical expertise at the level of medical Resident or better, with experience in the practice of Evidence Based Medicine, experience using handheld computers, and with the ability to schedule at least 4 weeks at a full time level to the fieldwork portion of the contract, to be supervised by a Professor of Medicine. 3) Access for the Residents to a clinical medical care teaching environment in which they may accompany medical teams on teaching rounds as an observer without playing any essential role in the team. 4) Reliable access to the Internet from a wireless handheld computer (a WiFi PDA or a PDA/cell phone) using the Palm or PocketPC operating system within the teaching environments visited by the medical teams. Sole Source Justification: The John A. Barns School of Medicine (JABSOM), University of Hawaii, and principal investigator Dr. Joshua Jacobs are uniquely qualified for this work because of their background and expertise in the integration of technology, especially mobile computing technology, into the teaching and practice of medicine. Dr. Jacobs co-teaches a medical informatics elective to resident physicians and has identified two or more qualified residents who are interested in conducting the fieldwork. Dr. Jacobs and these residents have access to medical teams during teaching rounds in a variety of clinical environments and settings associated with JABSOM. Dr. Jacobs and JABSOM students and staff are already familiar with the MD on Tap application and with wireless handheld computing technology in general. MD on Tap is being integrated into the Mobile Access Resource Project, a project initiated and directed by Dr. Jacobs with the goal of initiating and evaluating a mobile computing wireless system to support medical student access to health information, specifically NLM databases, at the point of learning. Dr. Jacobs has contributed to the design of the MD on Tap user interface and to the design of the transaction tracking program. He has worked with JABSOM technical and library staff to insure smooth integration of MD on Tap into the JABSOM curriculum. Dr. Jacobs has conducted previous evaluations for NLM, specifically of The Specialized Information Services ToxTown product. Joshua L. Jacobs, M.D, is a member of the faculty at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). He is actively engaged in health services research and process improvement, and is involved as principal investigator and co-investigator for several grants from the National Institutes of Health. He is also currently directing curriculum development using medical education technology. Dr. Jacobs is involved in several projects in medical informatics and medical education. In addition to his curriculum development activities, he teaches second year medical students in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum and an elective in medical informatics to fourth year medical students. Dr. Jacobs is also the Director of Medical Affairs at Hoana Medical, Inc.; a medical device company developing passive continuous non-contact patient monitoring equipment. He provides strategic direction and oversight of clinical research and marketing for the company. Dr. Jacobs is Board Certified with the American Board of Family Medicine. His interests include health outcomes research with a focus on the clinical application of information technology, and effective methods of teaching healthcare professionals how to use medical informatics effectively as a tool to help their research and patient care activities. His experience and education makes him uniquely qualified to perform the above referenced services. The proposed acquisition will be procured under FAR Part 13 - Acquisitions of Non- Commercial Items. This is not a Request for Quotations (RFQ), nor is an RFQ available. However, all responsive sources may submit a capabilities statement in a timely manner that will be considered by the Government. Sources interested in responding to this notice must be able to provide convincing evidence that they possess the requisite expertise and experience to successfully perform the services as specified above. Responses must be in writing and must be received in the office within fifteen (15) business days from the publication date of this notice. Proposals must include pricing information. NLM Synopsis No. NLM 06-035/CYC. Inquires regarding this procurement may be made to Cara Y. Calimano, Contract Specialist, NLM on (301) 496-6127.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland
- Zip Code: 20894
- Country: USA
- Zip Code: 20894
- Record
- SN00936891-W 20051125/051123211715 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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