Building an ESP Platform for the National Sleep Research Resource

This is a pre-solicitation non-competitive (Notice of Intent) synopsis to award a contract without providing for full and open competition. THIS IS A NOTICE OF INTENT, NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. A SOLICITATION WILL NOT BE ISSUED, AND PROPOSALS WILL NOT BE REQUESTED.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), intends to negotiate and award a purchase order to the Brigham and Women's Hospital on a sole source basis for developing and integrating cutting-edge, open-source web development tools and dynamic research data management systems, providing robust and highly interactive tools for this multicenter study and depositing the data into a web-based repository.

NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE
The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 541512 -- Computer Systems Design Services with a Size Standard of $25.5 Million

REGULATORY AUTHORITY
The resultant contract will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2019-02 dated May 6, 2019.

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 13-Simplified Acquisition Procedures, Subpart 13.106-1 (b)(1), Soliciting from a single source and is not expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold. Contracts awarded using FAR Part 13-Simplified Acquisition Procedures are exempt from the requirements of FAR Part 6-Competition Requirements.

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) intramural staff scientists Ashura W. Buckley and Audrey Thurm have proposed a study that will identify new EEG sleep-mediated biomarkers that map to both healthy and aberrant neural circuits during neurodevelopment entitled: Dependent Neuro-maturation in Clinical and Healthy Pediatric Populations via Electrophysiological Sleep Phenotyping (ESP).

The Contractor will be responsible for developing and integrating cutting-edge, open-source web development tools and dynamic research data management systems, providing robust and highly interactive tools for this multicenter study and depositing the data into a web-based repository. The web portal and data management system are developed and updated on a weekly basis using a continuous deployment methodology based on the agile software development framework. The tools deployment uses test-driven development to ensure robust functionality at all times. Continuous deployment is done using a zero-downtime architecture that enables researchers to continue using the web-based tools without interruption. The web service framework is designed to account for hardware or software failures by transparently rerouting a researcher and is also designed to balance heavy server loads across multiple servers. The Core provides thorough documentation of the software and the deployment architecture in the form of online version-controlled documentation, and web-based video tutorials. Electronic data entry is supported by the software program Slice (tryslice.io), which excels at dynamic in-application reporting and provides researchers and individual clinical sites a live snapshot of the current state of the database, including graphic representations of recruitment and data metrics. Slice also provides robust project management tools, including the ability to easily create and track participant/study schedules. Data interoperability is handled by the Spout JSON data dictionary framework to modularize data definitions into small, maintainable versioned data element descriptors.

Finally, the contractor's informatics team will promote data liberation, enabling researchers to export all data they have entered at any point in a useable format that can be imported into a new system of their choice. For this study, the National Sleep Research Resource (sleepdata.org) will be used as its repository. It is configured to accommodate physiological signals as well as all other types of data. There is controlled access to data and user-friendly procedures to submit and route Data Use Agreements. Data elements are mapped to meta-data and standardized terminology, promoting data harmonization and exploration. Signal processing tools facilitate advanced analysis of the signal data.

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE:
The anticipated period of performance is twelve months from date of award. A firm fixed price purchase order is contemplated.

INTENDED SOURCE:
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Inc.
75 Francis St
Boston, MA, 02115-6110

CLOSING STATEMENT
This synopsis is not a request for competitive proposals. However, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this notice.

Contractors that believe they possess the ability to provide the required services should submit documentation of their ability to meet the required services to the Contract Specialist. Contractors should also provide their Company Name, DUNS number, Physical Address, and Point of Contact Information.
In addition, the Dun & Bradstreet Number (DUNS), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size must be included in the response. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov."

All capability statements sent in response to this Notice of Intent must be submitted electronically (via email) to kim.stapleton@nih.gov and valerie.whipple@nih.gov in MS Word format before the closing date and time of this announcement. All responses must be received by the specified due date and time in order to be considered

A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement.

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