The National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB) coordinates and deploys informatics in support of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) research initiatives. Its goal is to maximize interoperability and integration of NCI research and its related information. Informatics support provided by the NCICB includes platforms, services, tools, and data. It participates in the evaluation and prioritization of the NC l's bioinformatics research portfolio. The NCICB serves as the locus for strategic planning to address the NCI's expanding research initiative's informatics needs. The NCICB establishes information technology standards (both within and outside of NCI). The NCICB communicates, coordinates, or establishes information exchange standards.
The NCICB provides direct support to four NC! research programs: Clinical Trials, The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project (CGAP), The Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium (MMHCC), and The Director's Challenge: Towards a Molecular Classification of Cancer. Support for these initiatives is provided through several modules with staff and resources dedicated to each effort. Each module is responsible for the development and deployment of informatics support for their initiative. This includes the deployment of informatics infrastructure, communication portals, data models, and vocabulary specific to that module. An additional module develops core infrastructure to support the integration of these efforts. The NCICB executes its institute-level mission through this core module working in concert with the leadership of the initiative-specific modules. The core module provides enterprise-wide vocabulary, data models, and infrastructure.
In addition to the programs above, NCICB develops applications and software distribution kits (SDKs) for use by the cancer research community. As these applications become widely adopted in the effort to cure cancer it is critical that they are highly available to the clinicians and researchers using them. The current NCICB hosting model provides fault tolerance for the applications but cannot provide the level of availability required in a clinical/research environment. Additionally, redundant communication pathways are lacking as well as environmental controls. NCICB has therefore had to seek out other hosting alternatives.
Under this pilot program the contractor shall provide 24x7 applications hosting for 2 critical NCICB applications. The applications the contractor will be required to host are Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) and Cancer Clinical Central Database (c3D). The leading particulars of each application are listed at 5.1.1 and 5.1.2. Each application has different technical requirements but each requires 99.99 % availability. In addition to guaranteed availability the contractor will be required to provide BIOS level remote access for designated NCICB Support Personnel. |