The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) is excited to post this announcement for a Request for Project Proposals (RPP) to rapidly develop and deploy the National Emergency Telecritical Care Network (NETCCN) - a cloud-based, low-resource, stand-alone health information management system for the creation and coordination of flexible and extendable “virtual critical care wards.” These high acuity, virtual wards would bring high-quality critical care capability to nearly every bedside, be it healthcare facility, field hospital, or gymnasium.
This program is specifically focused on preparation for COVID-19 related critical care capability shortages. Although the United States has more critical care beds per capita than other developed nations, emerging national and international experience with COVID-19-related critical illness suggests a high level of oncoming system stress on critical care resources and a likely potential for intensive care unit (ICU) beds and care teams to be overwhelmed.
Tele-critical care can be a powerful force-multiplier in the extension of limited critical care resources in both high-census urban centers and rural communities in which access to critical care – facilities, equipment and trained clinicians - is limited even under normal conditions. Many local and regional health systems have invested extensively in telemedicine capabilities, but many of these systems lack sufficient scalability, are limited both in interoperability with other telehealth systems and scope and reach of partner provider-networks and supported tele-clinical services.
The vision for this program is to extend local tele-critical care capability sets to a broader, flexible network - first locally, then step-wise regionally and nationally - that can be leveraged wherever there is need.
Enhanced White Papers are due no later than April 27 at 12:00pm Eastern Time. Due to the critical and urgent nature of the technical topic area, MTEC membership is NOT required for the submission of an Enhanced White Paper in response to this MTEC RPP. However, membership will be required for Offerors recommended for award. For information on how to join MTEC, please visit http://mtec-sc.org/how-to-join/
This RPP focuses on enhanced development of integrated technologies and clinical workflows to establish and rapidly scale virtual wards. The program will support the extension of high-quality intensive care to traditional (e.g. critical access hospitals and clinics) and non-traditional and temporary healthcare facilities (e.g. field hospitals and gymnasiums) which lack adequate critical care expertise and resources necessary for care of COVID-19-related illnesses. Enhanced white papers should specifically address providing EXISTING technologies available for other use cases that can be rapidly adapted to establishing a National Emergency Tele Critical Care Network (NETCCN). Existing technologies which should be included are as follows:
Task 1: Initial system configuration and alpha testing (t = 15 days)
Task 2: Rapid Development and beta testing (t = 30 days)
Task 3: Reliability Testing, Deployment and Enhancement (t = 45 days)
Task 4: Automated Improvements (t = 3-6 months)
Task 5: Full Scale Development and Integration (t = 6-12 months)
Offerors must be MTEC Members in good standing.
The U.S. Government (USG) Department of Defense (DoD) currently has available up to $7 Million (M) FY20 funds for Tasks 1, 2, and 3 of this program. The USG may apply additional dollars for follow-on efforts via post award modification to any resultant awards after the evaluation and acceptance of work and cost plan. Dependent on the results and deliverables, additional time may be added to the period of performance for follow-on tasks.
MTEC expects to make up to six (6) initial awards to qualified teams to accomplish the initial enhanced development effort within the statement of work. However, at each discrete phase of the project, the number of awardees may be down selected based on evaluation factors. If proposed projects are unable to sufficiently address the entire scope of work, several Offerors may be asked to work together in a collaborative manner. See the “MTEC Member Teaming” section below for more details. However, if an optimal team is not identified, then MTEC may make multiple, individual awards to Offeror(s) to accomplish subset(s) of the key tasks.
