JA - NCPTSD Mobile Apps - Final_Redacted.pdf

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a sole source firm-fixed-price

(FFP) contract to Vertical Design, INC (Vertical), 1219 Derby ST Berkeley, California 94702, United States, for continued support services for the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (NCPTSD), Dissemination and Training Division mobile applications (apps). This effort also includes conducting anonymized user research, developing new and updating mobile apps and integrating them into Vertical Design as part of their support services.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA NCPTSD develops training and educational resources to support evidence-based care for Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related conditions, which can significantly affect quality of life. Despite the availability of effective treatments, many Veterans do not access mental health services due to barriers such as limited availability, geographic distance from care, and stigma. In response to these challenges—and to broader shifts in care delivery, including the expansion of telehealth and community-based services during the COVID-19 pandemic— NCPTSD has developed a suite of mobile apps to improve access to care. These apps are now widely used across VA’s healthcare system and are designed to help Veterans and their families better understand PTSD, monitor symptoms over time, access support and resources, and practice evidence-based coping and relaxation strategies. NCPTSD currently maintains a portfolio of 37 mobile apps (e.g., PTSD Coach, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) Coach, Mindfulness Coach, Prolonged Exposure therapy Coach, Stay Quit Coach), that have been downloaded by over Veterans and others. Many of these are research-enabled mobile applications, and all of these are maintained by Vertical. VA requires that these mobile apps run on iPhone Operating System (OS)and Android OS and are capable of collecting (anonymized) usage data including session start time, stop time, duration, use of each major feature of the app, as well as user actions such as button presses, survey responses, and selected options. This usage data is primarily used by NCPTSD to support ongoing clinical care and research trials including Mind- Stride, PTSD Coach +, Insomnia Coach, Mindfulness Coach, and PTSD Coach in Primary Care. For users who prefer not to share usage data, VA requires that non-data-collecting versions of each app are also available. The data collecting and non-data collecting versions of each mobile apps are referred to as the “research” and “public” versions respectively.

VA previously awarded contracts VA26115C-0144, VA11817C-2307, 36C10B20C0042, and 36C10B23C0031 to Vertical to design, develop, and

National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Mobile Apps Control Number VA-26-00048712 maintain a cloud-hosted platform and associated development framework. This solution enables the secure integration of mobile applications with a centralized data environment. The Vertical developed Apps are hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud and operate under an existing Approval to Operate (ATO). The platform provides secure, scalable capabilities for the collection, transmission, storage, and analysis of anonymized usage data supporting multiple ongoing VA research studies. The system consists of multiple databases that store data from thousands of Veteran participants, as well as server components that provide both web-based and command-line interfaces for secure access and management. Both interfaces allow NCPTSD researchers to generate “invitation codes”. An invitation code is sent to a Veteran that has volunteered to take part in user experience testing. The Veteran downloads and installs the research version of the mobile app from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The Veteran then uses the invitation code to activate the mobile app.

Once the mobile app is activated, the app leverages the Vertical developed framework to periodically structure and securely send usage data. The Vertical developed framework is used to capture and securely send usage data from the app to the secure server. VA researchers then use either the web-based interface or command line tool to securely query the data and perform analysis.

The command line interface is also used to integrate VA systems/applications, allowing the VA to pull data directly without requiring manual intervention.

Vertical Design currently maintains their developed and development framework, which supports all research version mobile apps. The platform contains and is actively collecting usage data from millions of Veterans.

VA NCPTSD requires the continued provision of comprehensive support services for its existing digital health ecosystem. These services include hosting, maintenance, and operational support of the contractor-developed Vertical Design platform; ongoing maintenance of the current portfolio of approximately 37 mobile applications; and continued integration of these mobile applications with the platform. The maintenance and integration services ensure ongoing and accurate collection, storage and transmission of data under ideal and non-ideal use scenarios (e.g., infrequent Wi-Fi/cell service), responsiveness to changes in VA NCPTSD data requirements, and updates to research-enabled mobile applications to reflect public release versions. In addition, NCPTSD requires the development of one new research-enabled mobile application and one major update to an existing research application, including applications such as Mindfulness Coach and PTSD Coach. Collectively, these efforts include full integration of the applications into the Vertical Design platform as part of the overall support services. These efforts will allow NCPTSD to continue data capture for ongoing clinical trials and user experience studies, expand NCPTSD’s capability of delivering innovative, data-enabled interventions for PTSD, and increase the number of Veterans who can access these mobile applications from their personal devices.

The period of performance shall be September 29, 2026, through September 28, 2027, and will include three (3) 12-month option periods as well as 4 optional tasks. Optional tasks may be exercised for professional services, maintenance for mobile app coding, user interface design, and graphic design, mobile app research enablement and instrumentation, additional hosting and maintenance support. The total estimated value of the proposed action, inclusive of all options, is .

4. Statutory Authority: This requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C.

3304(a)(1) as implemented by Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) VA Deviation 6.103-1, entitled “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Vertical is the only responsible source capable of providing the required services due to its exclusive ownership of the proprietary, cloud-hosted and associated development framework. This framework underpins all required support, maintenance, and integration activities for the mobile applications. As part of its solution, Vertical has developed a proprietary data structure and format governing the transfer, storage, and management of research mobile application data. All VA NCPTSD mobile applications must be able to integrate and communicate within the existing Vertical development framework to seamlessly capture, transmit, and store usage data. Due to proprietary nature of the software code, no other vendor has access to Vertical’s proprietary source code and is therefore unable to provide the required support services to the solution and its integration with the mobile applications. The source code is required to ensure the continued support services, hosting, maintenance, and integration services are properly configured and updates can be developed effectively. Without the source code, it will be impossible to gain access to the coded structure, which is required to push the updates/upgrades to the Vertical solution and the associated mobile applications.

Vertical is the only source capable of providing the specialized services required to develop and maintain research mobile apps, including Mindfulness Coach 3.0 and PTSD Coach 4.2. Integration of these applications into the existing Vertical-developed environment necessitates direct access to Vertical’s proprietary source code and development framework. All new research mobile apps, as well as existing applications being ported across operating systems, must be specifically designed and implemented to ensure seamless interoperability with the Vertical Design. Vertical’s proprietary development framework is embedded within each application and is essential to enabling the secure capture, transmission, storage, and analysis of user interaction data supporting multiple ongoing VA research initiatives. In addition, each mobile app is further developed in order to capture specific usage data that is unique to the specific app. Without access to Vertical’s proprietary source code and developmental framework, these applications could not be ported or developed to integrate within the Vertical solution. Furthermore, it has been confirmed that Vertical does not make its proprietary source code available for licensing or purchase.

VA requires uninterrupted access to all mobile application usage data— encompassing currently collected, actively generated, and future data—through the Vertical solution. Any disruption in support services for the Vertical Design platform and its associated fielded mobile applications would result in the NCPTSD losing access to all accumulated and ongoing usage data. Such a loss would critically impair a series of ongoing clinical care initiatives and research trials. These include multiple VA- and NIH-funded efforts, such as CPT Coach and PE Coach trials, CPT Coach Explorer, PTSD Coach 4.0, -, STAIR Coach, Enhanced Insomnia Coach, CBTi Coach, and Mindfulness Coach. In addition, CBTi Coach Explorer is currently supporting an Office of Information and Technology-funded project that enables VA providers to securely receive sleep diary data from Veterans participating in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi). Interruption of data would also result in clinical disruptions in care to digital versions of the Safety Plan app for Veterans at risk of suicide.

These efforts to support NCPTSD mobile apps are essential to provide reliable, high-quality mental health service to Veterans, their families, and health care providers. Furthermore, a loss of data continuity would halt the collection of critical usage data from fielded mobile apps, directly affecting multiple funded research trials that depend on this data for clinical analysis. Break in data collection would cause the inability to meet the aggressive milestones set for these research trials could result in termination of one or more trials. This would result in substantial harm to individual Veterans who are actively engaged in trials and clinical services designed to reduce symptoms of PTSD, who would no longer have access to these research-enabled apps or be able to contribute to the larger body of knowledge on how to best treat PTSD using mobile apps.

Ultimately, the loss of these services would sever the connection between Veterans’ use of PTSD-related mobile apps and the providers and researchers who rely on this data to inform and improve care delivery.

The duplicative effort of switching to another source would cause detrimental cost, delay, and downtime, at an estimated cost of at least five years and

. This estimate is based on previous efforts to create the existing infrastructure. These duplicated costs would not be recovered through competition. Because the source code is unique and proprietary to Vertical, the use of another source would require a thorough analysis of the data coding, scripts, and relationships and intercommunications between the data itself, the mobile apps, and interfaces as to how the current framework and processes of the mobile apps and its data could translate and be compatible within a new solution. Such analysis would need to be a specific solution as each solution would include its own proprietary code and have unique translation requirements.

Transference to a new solution would then require a complete extraction of all data, a process that is not guaranteed to ensure all data would be transferable.

Additionally, all currently deployed research mobile apps would require full redevelopment to align with the proprietary frameworks of any new system, further compounding cost, schedule, and operational impacts.

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. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. Furthermore, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities Page in accordance with RFO

5.201. Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated.

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

8. Market Research: Government NCPTSD technical experts have conducted market research, most recently in February 2026, through a combination of direct engagement with industry vendors and independent internet research to identify potential sources capable of fulfilling the requirement for vertical support services and mobile apps services. Specifically, the technical experts conducted direct communications with other mobile analytics and software development companies such as MixPanel, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Flurry Analytics, and Respectlytics. While these other manufacturer solutions offer general capabilities to provide a solution, the NCPTSD technical experts determined that only Vertical has access to the proprietary data and source code necessary to continue the support services, and the porting of and development of mobile apps that can integrate into the Vertical Design development. Communications with these manufacturer representatives confirmed that, in order to utilize either manufacturer solution, NCPTSD would have to overhaul the entire existing Vertical system and replace it completely with the corresponding manufacturer’s solution creating substantial duplication of time and costs as described above.

These sources that were contacted all agreed with the Government’s assessment. Data collected and stored by the Vertical Design’s was not guaranteed to be recovered by either manufacturer’s solution. Further, all existing research mobile applications would require redevelopment to function within a new environment, resulting in significant duplication of effort, increased cost, and potential disruption to ongoing operations. Government technical experts reached these conclusions based on their analysis, and these findings were concurred with by the contacted vendors.

On June 23, 2026, Vertical confirmed to VA that they own all the intellectual property rights for their products and they are the only ones that are authorized to provide the required services. Vertical also confirmed that they do not have third-party technical services and no other vendor has access to their code. Without access to the proprietary code, no other provider can provide the requisite services. There is no competition expected for this effort nor is there the possibility that this proposed action can be set aside due to proprietary reasons.

On July 20, 2026, the Contracting Specialist posted a Request for Information (RFI) on General Services Administration (GSA) and SAM.gov to identify comparable software solutions and determine whether other brands could meet the VA’s software requirements. More than fifty responses were received through GSA and SAM.gov. The Government technical experts determined that the respondents do not meet all of VA’s requirements and that only Vertical is capable of fully meeting the requirements. VA posted a notification on GSA and

SAM.gov of VA’s acquisition strategy after market research concluded that only Vertical is capable of fully meeting the requirements.

9. Other Facts: None

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on price analysis to include an analysis of the proposed price in relation to the Independent Government Cost Estimate and past historical prices paid for the same and/or similar requirements and subsequent negotiations held as necessary.

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of continued support services for the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Dissemination and Training Division mobile applications, on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the statutory authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

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