RFI Body.pdf

Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Information & Technology;

Request for Information for Blood Bank Validation Services

This is a Request for Information (RFI) only, and is being issued for the sole purpose of conducting market research. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Proposal (RFP) nor a guarantee that one will be issued by the Government in the future.

Furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. Do not submit a Proposal. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not, at this time, seeking proposals or quotes, and therefore, will not accept, review, or evaluate unsolicited proposals or quotes received in response hereto. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted as a result of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any costs associated with submission of the information being requested or reimburse expenses incurred for responses to this RFI. The information provided may be used by VA in developing its acquisition strategy and Performance Work Statement (PWS). Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary; however, any information received shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the respondent. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. This is an RFI and does not obligate the Government in any way, nor does it commit the Government to any specific course of action. Please note the schedule and number of events are still in development and subject to change.

The mission of the VA Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office (EHRM-IO) is to transform how the VA delivers health care by implementing an enterprise-wide electronic health record (EHR) to standardize care across facilities, strengthen interoperability and collaboration with federal and community partners, foster innovation, improve provider and Veteran experiences, and ensure the continued delivery of high-quality, safe, and efficient health care to our nation’s Veterans. EHRM- IO is in the process of migrating VA’s 170 Medical Centers (VAMCs) from the Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) to the Oracle Health (OH) Millenium EHR.

Many of these VAMCs operate a blood bank and/or perform transfusion services and will be using the Oracle Health Pathnet Blood Bank system after go-live. Validation Services are required by regulatory and accreditation organizations (VA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Association of Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB), Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) and The Joint Commission (TJC)) to ensure patient and blood products safety. Compliance with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Regulations requires that these environments are validated prior to go-live.

The anticipated VA schedule for go-lives has 28 go-live events between January 2027 and November 2031, although this is subject to change as the schedule is still in development. Each go-live event has between two (2) and 14 sites which will require validation to be completed simultaneously. There are 129 blood bank sites which require validation prior to go-live.

EHRM-IO seeks a contractor to provide blood bank validation services at each site with Full Blood Bank/Transfusion Medicine Services and those with transfusion only services to validate the build and configuration of the system, both for the local site build and enterprise review of all orderables, interpretation patterns, blood products, instrumentation connectivity and patient product compatibility.

Validation services are expected to start no later than August 1, 2026, last up to 12 weeks per site and be completed no later than one month prior to the Go-Live deployment date, however these dates are also subject to chang prior to official solicitation.

It is requested that all companies interested in participating in this effort please note their interest and submit responses to the items listed below.

If interested please provide/respond to the following:

1. Indicate whether you are a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) or a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB), or another type of small business not veteran related, and if so under which North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code(s) are you considered a Small Business (as stated in the System for Award Management (SAM) Database).

2. Provide any questions/concerns/comments on the Draft PWS.

3. Provide a capability statement describing your company’s ability to meet the requirements in the attached draft PWS. This shall include relevant, applicable references to examples of previous work or solution implementations, and/or organizational experience that relates to this requirement. The capability statement shall be limited to five (5) pages and no more than five (5) megabytes (MB). RFI submissions shall be provided to the points of contact (POC) identified in this posting.

Instructions for Submitting Questions and the RFI Response:

The VA Technology Acquisition Center POCs for this RFI are Contract Specialist Steven Baum and Contracting Officer Wendella Baptiste. Submit questions directly to steven.baum@va.gov, with a CC to wendella.baptiste@va.gov.