Telepathology Pilot Program

Amendment 4 is to add Q&A responses to the RFI Amendment 3 is to extend the RFI closing date from 2/5/2024 to 2/12/2024. The Government's response to additional vendor questions will be addressed in the next amendment.

Amendment 2 is to provide the Government response to RFI questions (attached) and to remove “limited, proof of concept” langauge from the DESCRIPTION OF SERVICES.

Amendment 1 is to add Fed Ramp documentation to provide interested vendors the chance to begin the process now if they are not yet VA approved. The process can take upwards of a year if not approved and is highly recommended to start the process before the soliciation is posted.

The VHA National Telepathology Program (NTPP) initiative, currently in the market research phase for diagnostic telepathology pilot system, is evaluating current and future capabilities for solutions that provide secure acquisition, storage in a FedRAMP-certified cloud, retrieval, communication, viewing, reporting, documentation, importing/exporting/exchange, workflow management, referring clinician and patient access and review, image integration into VHA electronic health record (EHR), and other critical functionality for all VHA clinical domains using digitized pathology images.

Clinical domains include, but are not limited to, the following areas: surgical pathology and cytology, with adjunct studies such as immunohistochemistry and cytochemical stains. This pilot system will eventually be replaced by a broader national telepathology system that is fully integrated into a VHA-wide enterprise imaging system. Estimated annual volume of VHA imaging may exceed 1 million exams when all pathology specialties are included.

Important features of interest for VHA Pilot NTPP will include, but are not limited to, digital pathology platforms, image management system, integration solution with current and future VHA EHR, universal availability of digitized images viewing and reports on all VA desktops, specialty-specific diagnostic viewers and clinical tools or compatibility with third party specialty-specific diagnostic viewers, specialty-specific integrated artificial intelligence (AI) functionality, integrated voice recognition, reporting, communication, quality improvement, quality assurance, and data mining capabilities for use in all clinical domains, capability to interface with all product validated DICOM clinical digital pathology scanners and external systems , as well as workflow capabilities in each clinical domain, ability to manage and archive DICOM images, bidirectional exchange of images with DOD and community (non-VHA) partners, and viewing capabilities for ordering/referring providers and patients.

Complete integration and uploading of image data, annotations and reports into VHA’s EHR. System must also demonstrate the ability to ingest and convert non DICOM images to DICOM for archiving.