SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- Computational Thinking
- Notice Date
- 4/6/2010
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, 6707 Democracy Blvd., Suite 105, Bethesda, Maryland, 20894, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20894
- Solicitation Number
- HHS-NIH-NLM-RDSS-10-105
- Archive Date
- 4/14/2010
- Point of Contact
- Kimberly Pringle, Phone: 301-496-6546, Robin D Hope-Williams, Phone: 301-435-4379
- E-Mail Address
-
kp271m@nih.gov, rhwilli@mail.nih.gov
(kp271m@nih.gov, rhwilli@mail.nih.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- Reference No.: HHS-NIH-NLM-SBSS-10-105-KP Computational Thinking in Support of Clinicians and Biomedical Scientists RECOVERY. This is a Small Business Sources Sought Notice. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information regarding: (1) the availability and capability of qualified small business sources; (2) whether there are small businesses; HUBZone small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; 8(a) small businesses; veteran-owned small businesses; woman-owned small businesses; or small disadvantaged businesses; and (3) their size classification relative to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for the proposed acquisition. Your response to the information requested will assist the Government in determining the the appropriate acquisition method, including whether a set-aside is possible. Background As part of its "Medical Advanced Research Projects Initiative," NLM wishes to evaluate the feasibility of using innovative computational approaches to enhance the ability of clinicians and biomedical scientists to solve one or more significant cognitive tasks and bring improvements in medical care to patients, families, and the public. Because of progressive advances in technology and computer science, computers can now perform exhaustive searches in many decision areas, in contrast to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in years past, devoted strongly to pruning decision trees. Accordingly, NLM believes powerful new partnerships between humans and computer may now be possible, and it is timely to re-access what are the most important computational challenges in bio-medicine. NLM intends to solicit feasibility or "proof of concept" studies that could serve as the basis for future longer-term, more extensive research projects. Innovative, "high-risk/high pay-off" proposals are the focus of this announcement; proposals bases on incremental improvements of existing systems will not be favorably reviewed. AI, a term coined in 1956, seemed to have limitless potential, including the development of thinking machines. Much was accomplished in knowledge representation, programming languages, and in development of expert systems that could do useful things in this or that domain. The latter, "partially intelligent artifacts", however, fell far short of duplicating the general intelligence of the human. Nevertheless, key challenges, for example, understanding of natural language in texts and speech, as well as a generation of innovative ideas and discovery, remain largely unresolved. Because few today believe that "strong AI" i.e. human-like cognition or better, is a likely near-term achievement, research and development largely gravitated to "weak" or "applied" AI, intended to produce "smart" tools, such as a security system capable of face recognition. To invigorate research in the arena of computation and cognition (and to avoid the increasingly diffuse connotations of the term "AI"), a number of fresh concepts, each focused on somewhat different aspects of the issues, have arisen in recent years: computational intelligence, machine learning, intelligence amplifying systems, flexible competence, human-computer collaboration, and computational thinking inter alia. For NLM, three factors have combined to rekindle interest in the potential of computation to carry out more ambitious cognitive tasks. • Continued advances in information technology and computer science • Increased awareness that "intelligent" behavior by computers requires substantial understanding of the operational decision space, and the more distantly related surrounding turf. • Redirection of goal from replacement of humans to enhancement of human intelligence by a human-machine partnership. In biomedicine, clinicians and researchers now face formidable challenges in information management, innovation, and decision-making in an era which is seeing extraordinarily rapid growth of knowledge, distributed among a host of databases, and on a scale far larger than can be mastered by an individual. NLM believes that the remarkable speed, memory, and symbol-manipulating power of computers, if properly harnessed, can complement human cognitive strengths so as to enable efficient use of all of the knowledge relevant to solution of clinical and scientific problems. Objectives Clinicians, public health practitioners, and scientists (clinical and biological) face different professional challenges; the functions performed by a computational partner will depend on specific needs of each and on relevant domains of knowledge. Some areas in which computers could be of assistance include (among others): • Discovery science, including new methods for proposing creative hypotheses in clinical medicine and in biology, based on an interrogation of large, heterogeneous (experimental or computational) data sets.. • Language understanding of medical records, and of databases • Interpretation and intelligent summarization of data, text, or images • Decision support under uncertainty with associated explanations • "Intelligent" search and retrieval • "Reasoning" by analogy • Computer awareness of individual human needs, preferences • Computational analysis and modeling • Pattern recognition Following are examples of questions that are suitable starting points for investigation by those interested in Computational Thinking: 1. To what extent can the reasoning of new systems for Computational Thinking be made to answer to the need of humans to understand a decision or explanation? 2. In what ways can Computational Thinking programs explain and defend their recommendations? 3. Can a program for Computational Thinking recognize what it does not know? How? In what areas? 4. Are there areas of discourse in which understanding of Common Sense by the computer is necessary for useful function of programs for Computational Thinking? Are there areas in which Common Sense is not essential for useful thinking? Can we know the difference? 5. What is the size of the vocabulary needed for a Computational Thinking program to interact helpfully in a medical setting? What setting? What size? 6. Is there an area of Computational Thinking in which simple input will be helpful? What area? How simple? 7. Can a Computational Thinking program accept sophisticated processing of image data and then reason further to assist interpretation of the images, or management of the patient? Can a Computational Thinking Program interpret the information on the current labels of a patient's current medications by expressing instructions to the patient, and, by accessing publicly available databases, bring back knowledge about the chemical structures, the actions of the individual drugs, the potential side effects, the likely interactions amongst the drugs, the availability of cheaper or better formulations? Required Tasks: The contractor will be required to participate in the following tasks or prepare the following deliverables: 1. Attend contractor meetings (at NIH or some other mutually acceptable designated location). The contract PI is required to attend and may bring such support staff as needed to participate in a technical research and development discussion. These meetings will be held quarterly. 2. Participate with the contractor team to meet the goals for this project. The expected level of participation includes regular attendance at teleconferences, video-conferences, or virtual conferences as scheduled by the Project Officer. 3. Obtain prior to submission of the offer an appropriate approval from an Institutional Review Board for research that involves human subjects but does not involve one of the six categories of research that are exempt under 45 CFR Part 46. 4. Ensure that any patient information to be included in the R&D is appropriately anonymized. 5. Contribute documentation, tutorial materials, and courseware developed under the support of this contract. Reporting/Deliverables: All principal investigators are required to attend quarterly progress meetings. Oral presentations and progress reports will be requested at those meetings, and electronic copies of slides, handouts, or documentation will serve as quarterly reports. Periodic teleconferences, video-conferences, or virtual conferences will be held to provide continuing communication among the project team. Attendance at these meetings is highly recommended. All deliverables will reside in the public domain. Deliverables will be reports to NLM that include: Introduction Methodology Results Discussion Proposed Future Directions Summary References Anticipated Period of Performance: The anticipated period of performance is one year from date of award. Other Important Considerations: The purpose of this procurement is to obtain contract development services that will develop and test computational approaches to one or more cognitive problems as commonly encountered by clinician, clinical researcher, biologist, or patient. NLM places no constraint on approach. Artificial neural nets, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, statistical (e.g., Bayesian inference, regression, etc.) and other methods, alone or in combination are acceptable as are novel approaches. NLM expects that progress on each project will be an exploratory focus on feasibility testing; full scale development and formal testing are not requirements. Other issues to be addressed include relationship to project officer, meetings including a final all-hands presentation, requirements for submitting a proposal, review criteria, selection criteria, period of performance, sharing of all software, code, and documentation with NLM, etc. Interested firms responding to this sources sought notice must adhere to the following: (a) Provide a capability statement that includes respondent's name, address, point of contact, phone number, e-mail address and DUNS number. A brief description of comparable current and prior work, expertise, facilities, organizational structure, qualifications of key individuals (documenting expertise and field experience in the areas of interest) and any teaming arrangement needed to fulfill the requirement. (b) Identification of any current negotiated GSA schedule, Government contract or commercial pricing rates; (c ) Respondent's type of small business and business size (e.g. 8(a), HUBZone, etc.). (d) Provide any other related information that the vendor may deem to be helpful to making determinations regarding this requirement. (e) Respondents must ensure that their response is complete and and contains sufficient detail for the Government to make an informed decision regarding your capabilities, however, the capability statement shall not exceed 10 pages. All capability statements must be submitted in writing. Respondents shall electronically submit capabilities statements to pringlek@mail.nih.gov and must be received no later than 1:00 p.m. eastern standard time on Wednesday, April 14, 2010, all inquiries regarding this announcement should be directed to Kimberly Pringle, Contract Specialist, via e-mail at pringlek@mail.nih.gov. Telephone and facsimile responses will NOT be accepted. This is not a request for proposal. This is a Sources Sought announcement and in no way commits the Government to award a contract. The Government will not execute any award(s) based solely on responses to this notice. The Government will not assume any responsibility for any cost incurred in response to this notice. Disclaimer and Important Notes: This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Federal Business Opportunities. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. Confidentiality. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/NIH/OAM/HHS-NIH-NLM-RDSS-10-105/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892, United States
- Zip Code: 20892
- Zip Code: 20892
- Record
- SN02113422-W 20100408/100406234618-eb3b8f4cbb5a0482a246e1baa8c46b9c (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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