70 -- INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION PROJECT Request for Information (RFI)/Market Research. THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION ANNOUNCEMENT. A SOLICITATION IS NOT AVAILABLE. No contract will be awarded on the basis of this announcement. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is interested in product and pricing information for 9 product categories. This RFI is issued to seek sources and encourage Information Technology (IT) companies to provide information on existing products and technologies capable of implementing one or more of the following categories. (1) Geographical Information Systems products that can support the mapping and analysis of geographically coded data stored in a range of databases and file formats. Only products with capabilities comparable to or greater than ArcView and ArcInfo are of interest. (2) HL7 and XML Data Capture products that can support the capture or conversion of legacy data formats to HL7 or XML. (3) Data Repository Systems products that can provide relational, object-relational, or native XML database management services with explicit support for XML database schema generation, XML import and export of data and XML/XSL based user access to data. CDC has special interest in products that support programmability in Java and Enterprise Java Beans. Systems must be capable of scaling from single processor servers to multi-processor servers supporting multiple 100's of gigabytes of data. (4) LDAP Directory products that can provide LDAP services to distributed communities across the Internet. Individuals will have directory entries at multiple sites with differing schema. Automated distributed insertion, modification and purging of an individuals records must be supported. Adherence to the latest published LDAP standards is desired. (5) Data and Systems Security products that can provide security control over access to data and functions residing on web servers, applications servers and database servers. Firewall functionality may be included but is not required. Products must support PKI authentication and authorization services for data access control as well as encryption services for data security in transit to and from the servers across the Internet. Products should support X.509 certificates and hardware tokens. A means of providing for portable X.509 certificates is preferred. (6) Reporting & Scientific Visualization products that can generate reports from various data sources including but not limited to databases, flat files, and structure documents that can operate in a standalone and multi-user environment. Products of interest to CDC will produce multiple report formats i.e. line listing, tabular, cross-tab, nested, graphics, and descriptive statistics. The product should support multiple object or database interfaces i.e. COM, CORBA, EJB, ODBC, JDBC. (7) Metadata Repository products that can provide a means of managing metadata concepts in a database with accompanying tools to facilitate the automation of data and metadata from a variety of sources and software development environments. Tools should allow users to extract, transform, analyze and compare data and metadata in a web-based environment. Products should comply with national and international metadata management standards (e.g. ANSI X3.285, ISO11179). In addition, efforts encouraging standardization for metadata exchange between registries should be considered (e.g. Open Information Model from the Metadata Coalition (MDC) and Object Management Group's XMI standard.) (8) Outbreak Detection products that can monitor time series data from public health surveillance and information systems to 1) detect departures from expected patterns of health event distributions and 2) facilitate public health practitioners in undertaking timely public health responses locally and regionally and making policy decisions on a national basis. There may not be a single method for signal detection or pattern recognition for different syndromes, onset of epidemics, or identification of aberrations for the spectrum of infectious and chronic diseases and other health events data which demonstrate such varied characteristics as seasonality, frequency, and geographic aggregation. Consequently the monitoring system must support some level of programmability or scripting. The monitoring system should aid in determining statistical or clinical significance and visual validation of departures beyond expectation thresholds. The methods considered for the monitoring system could include time series modeling, time-space cluster techniques, and newer data mining and pattern recognition tools such as neural networks, classification and regression trees, record clustering methods, ensembles, and patient profile visualization. Automated application for repeated methods application on frequently updated data, as well as component interoperability are desirable characteristics for the monitoring system. (9) Registry Matching products that can match, link, de-duplicate, and update electronic records from different data sources and has the capability to do automatic matching based on key matching variables, to allow user interaction on marginal/inexact matches, to assign variable weights to match variables, to perform batch processing, to support real-time single and multi-stage matching, to save queries, and to generate reports. Interested parties are invited to provide in writing a Capability Statement in sufficient detail to allow for evaluation of products. The Capability Statement should be written with consideration for the following: [1] Products must be "open systems" in that as broad a range of operating systems and hardware platforms as possible should be supported including, at a minimum, Microsoft Windows, Unix (leading brands), and Linux OS's and on platforms based on Intel or non-Intel microprocessors including such platforms as IBM RS6000, DEC Alpha, and Sun Microsystems; [2] CDC will have special interest in products which use web-based user-interfaces for both client and administrator functions; [3] CDC will have special interest in products that use directly or can import from and export to various national or international standard formats including but not limited to HL7, X12, X.509, XML as appropriate; [4] CDC will select only from products with proven track records as demonstrated by including a list of customers currently using the specific product referenced; [5] CDC would expect to deploy any product selected (or an applicable runtime version) within mission activities that include sites at other Federal, State and Local government facilities, and also allied educational or research institutions whether public or private; and, [6] CDC requests product pricing information be included that details any volume pricing, site license, and runtime version distribution programs or policies that could help. Responses found to consist only of marketing materials and without the requested customer lists and pricing information will be discarded without further consideration. Please indicate clearly all categories for which your product is suitable. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE FOR THIS REQUEST; CONSEQUENTLY RESPONSES RECEIVED AFTER 2:00 P.M. ON AUGUST 31, 2000, WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. Capability Statements should be emailed to Lenore Mickle, Contract Specialist, at Lmickle@cdc.gov. Please put "Response to 2000-RFI-00001" in the subject line of your email. Please send your response in the form of a WordPerfect or Word attachment. All information received will be safeguarded against unauthorized disclosure, therefore proprietary information submitted will be protected if properly marked. This RFI is not to be construed, either implicitly or explicitly, as a commitment by the Government to compensate voluntary respondents in any way for information, materials or demonstrations provided. The information gathered from the responses to this RFI may be subsequently used to purchase one or more of the commercial software packages to support any or all of these categories. In order to protect the integrity of any possible future procurement(s), additional information will not be given beyond that provided in this RFI. WEB: Visit this URL for the latest information about this, http://www2.eps.gov/cgi-bin/WebObjects/EPS?ACode=S&ProjID=Reference-Number-2000-RFI-00001&LocID=2965. E-MAIL: Lenore Mickle, LMickle@CDC.GOV. Posted 08/11/00 (D-SN485138).

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0488 20000815\SP-0035.MSC)

| SP - Special Notices Index  |  Issue Index |