Digital Annotation of Whole-Mount Radical Prostatectomy Histopathology Slides

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Urologic Oncology Branch (UOB), plans to procure, on a sole source basis, a study to perform digital annotations on 1,912 digital images of whole-mount radical prostatectomy slides. Histowiz, Inc 760 Parkside Ave, Ste 121 Brooklyn, NY 11226 The response close date of the notice for this requirement is in accordance with FAR 5.203(b).

This acquisition will be processed under FAR Part 12 – Acquisition for Commercial Items and will be made pursuant to the authority in FAR Part 13.106-1 (b)(1) and is exempt from the requirements of FAR Part 6. The North American Industry Classification System code is 541380 Testing Laboratories and the business size standard is $16.5 million. UOB requires the comprehensive digital annotation of images taken from whole-mount radical prostatectomy specimens.

These services must be provided by sub-specialty trained genitourinary pathologists since the results will be utilized to further develop artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms specifically for prostate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). At UOB efforts are underway to use technology to digitally analyze histology images with the goals of gaining efficiency and accuracy in interpreting the image data.

The increasing amounts of these images acquired created a burden for interpretation by UOB’s experts that reached unsustainable levels. Thus, UOB requires the assistance of sub-specialized genitourinary pathologists from outside the NIH for its timely completion. The vendor HistoWiz Inc is a commercial pathology company that performed these digital annotation services for UOB in the past.

The utilization of the same vendor for these annotation services will allow a rapid turnaround time and a seamless integration of the new data into the pre-existing annotated image data sets. Moreover, this vendor has identified three sub-specialty trained genitourinary pathologists within their network who can exclusively perform these services. Furthermore, in the event additional subspecialty trained genitourinary pathologists are needed for this project, HistoWiz Inc can immediately recruit their services. To UOB’s knowledge, no other vendor can conduct the digital annotations exclusively by sub-specialized genitourinary pathologists within a reasonable time frame.