GS-35F-362CA-007.pdf

Praedico Analytics Platform Control Number: TAC-19-54747 Limited Site Edition Software Subscription

LIMITED SOURCES JUSTIFICATION

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07731

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for the award of a firm-fixed price (FFP) order under the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) GS-35F-362CA (SKU#PRAEDICO024) from Bitscopic, Inc. for the renewal of Praedico Analytics Platform software subscription, inclusive of maintenance.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Veterans Health Association (VHA) Public Health Surveillance and Research (PHSR), conducts public health surveillance and research within VA. PHSR has a requirement for the software subscription, inclusive of maintenance, renewal of current Praedico Analytics Platform Limited. This software subscription renewal will enable PHSR, located at Palo Alto, CA, to continue to utilize the epidemiologic analytical software in its daily investigative and routine public health surveillance activities. The product will allow PHSR epidemiologists to efficiently perform investigative work required by VHA Handbook 1004-08 “Disclosure of Adverse Events to Patients,” and by Congressional mandate. With this software, PHSR is able to carry out lookbacks, outbreak investigations, and epidemiologic investigations on a daily basis with speed, accuracy and efficiency. The ability to build, modify, and save queries, and to share public health surveillance data among PHSR staff saves time and allows PHSR Epidemiologists to devote time to drilling down into critical chart reviews and other important data gathering aspects of the investigation. It will also improve Veteran outcomes by providing VA clinicians with access to PHSR-provided reports and interventions related to the following: seasonal influenza trends; important emerging infectious disease occurrences, such as Zika virus, which greatly affected Veteran travelers and pregnant women; and contaminated devices involved in over 38,000 surgeries performed on veterans. PHSR intervention and assistance with many other lookback events and outbreaks will be facilitated by utilization of Praedico.

The contractor shall also provide software support in accordance with its GSA Schedule for the Praedico software which includes publishing of bug/defect fixes via patches and updates/upgrades in function and technology to maintain the operability and usability of the software product. The period of performance shall from June 19, 2019 through June 18, 2020.

4. Statutory Authority: This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple- Award Schedule Program. The specific authority providing for a limited source award is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), “Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized.”

https://vaww.admin.voa.va.gov/ACT/ACT.aspx?ACTID=66305

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is Bitscopic, Inc. 585 Broadway Street, Redwood City, CA. Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this justification, it was determined that only Praedico Analytics Platform software subscription will meet the Government’s requirements. VA technical experts determined that only Praedico Analytics Platform software has the ability to be adapted specifically for the functionality required by VA such as integrated geospatial mapping and graphing capabilities, can be scaled to accept the volume and various types of data VA wishes to consume, contains all required functionality housed within a single biosurveillance application, and utilizes International Classification of Diseases-Tenth Revision-Clinical Modification (ICD-10- CM)/Personal Care Services codes for which the Department of Health and Human Services requires for implementation to replace the existing ICD-9 system on October 1, 2014 by final rule CMS-0040-F issued on September 5, 2012. Only software that digests these codes and merges data on a national level will allow us to perform mandate outbreak and lookback investigation. Other systems that provide licenses per single site do not merge data on a national level. Furthermore, Praedico Analytics Platform software is a proprietary software product; therefore, no other software maintenance provider has the proprietary code to perform the necessary maintenance and technical support services including software upgrades, updates, enhancements, and corrections. Access to this code is also needed to ensure all services provided are properly configured.

Public Health surveillance for the Veteran population requires the ability to acquire, manipulate, and analyze enormous amounts of health data for millions of Veterans on a national level. If the Praedico software subscription is not renewed to perform this complex and computationally-intensive data management task, PHSR will be unable to effectively accomplish public health surveillance for Veterans and the ability to conduct look back investigations, as required by VA, the Office of Inspector General, and Congress, would be critically impaired, thus significantly reducing the ability to provide public health guidance to VHA clinical staff. Finally, without the Praedico software, the national influenza data report would be far more difficult to generate and the many regional and local VA groups that depend on the national reports would be deprived of their principal source of Veteran influenza data.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. It was determined that Bitscopic, Inc. is the only provider of Praedico Analytics Platform software and maintenance. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 8.405-6(a)(2) the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The PHSR team has conducted ongoing research of commercial biosurveillance products since September 2015. Most recently, the epidemiologic team attended the annual International Society for Disease Surveillance conference in February 2019, where the latest innovations in public health biosurveillance were presented, ensuring they deeply understand the most recent advances in this field.

Specific similar biosurveillance products that were reviewed included but were not limited to EpiQuery, HealthMap, BioSense, and FirstWatch. In their review of other public health biosurveillance products, the PHSR Epidemiologic team have determined that other systems do not have the capability to be scaled for the VA, nor do they contain all the functionality needed by the VA, nor use customizable statistical algorithms necessary for VA data. Since these are required capabilities of the biosurveillance system needed by the VA, the other systems reviewed do not present viable alternatives. The Associate Director of PHSR and the Epidemiology team have considerable experience with commercial and Government biosurveillance products and have determined that the Praedico Analytics Platform Limited Site Edition software subscription is the only system available that can meet the needs of the VHA’s Office of Public Health Surveillance and Research program. Furthermore, direct communications with Bitscopic on February 26, 2019 confirmed Bitscopic has no authorized resellers for the Praedico Analytics Platform Limited software subscription. The confirmation email has been placed in the contract file.

In addition, VA issued a Request for Information (RFI) with a draft Product Description on May 16, 2018 to open market contractors through Federal Business Opportunities, NASA SEWP V GWAC, and GSA’s e-Buy tool to ascertain the ability of any other source to provide an alternate product. The intent of the three RFIs was to ascertain if any other brand name products could meet VA’s needs. The three RFIs included language to secure participation of small business, small disadvantaged business, service-disabled Veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB), Veteran-owned small business (VOSB), women-owned small business, and Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) small business concerns. Responses to the RFIs from all venues were due on May 23, 2018. No responses were received from the three RFIs.

9. Other Facts: N/A