HALO Digital Pathology Platform

The Department of the Interior's Interior Business Center has published a Notice of Intent to Sole Source for the HALO Digital Pathology Platform on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI). The government intends to negotiate a firm-fixed-price acquisition with Indica Labs Inc for the renewal of annual licenses for their HALO quantitative digital pathology software. This special notice falls under the Custom Computer Programming Services NAICS category and involves IT and telecom business application software as a service. The contract will support the NCI Intramural research program staff and collaborators by providing digital pathology analysis capabilities hosted in NCI's Amazon Web Services cloud environment. The acquisition is being processed as a non-competitive sole source procurement.

The purpose of this sole source acquisition is to continue providing specialized digital pathology software that includes web-based management of whole slide images, various analysis capabilities including cell-based and object-based analysis, AI-based analysis tools, and clinical pathology workflow modules. The software requires integration with NIH Clinical Center systems and must support secure external collaboration capabilities along with multiple image formats and biomarker quantification. Interested parties may submit capabilities statements electronically to Contracting Officer Russell Pfeiffer by 10:00 AM ET on June 25, 2025, with submissions limited to ten pages and specific formatting requirements. The anticipated contract structure includes a one-year base period with two additional one-year option periods. The government has already developed significant custom infrastructure and integrations specifically tailored to NCI's operational needs, which supports the rationale for the sole source approach.