The Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service (IHS) is seeking a cloud-based video conferencing solution for its expanding telehealth program.
In a Dec. 11 sources sought notice on Beta.Sam.gov, IHS said that due to COVID-19 dramatically increasing the demand for telehealth it is looking for an affordable, secure, and scalable video conferencing solution to enable patient-to-provider and provider-to-provider telehealth meetings.
IHS, which provides healthcare for approximately 2.6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, is seeking sources who already have experience in successfully providing a cloud-based video conferencing solution supporting telehealth programs. It underscored that the experience needs to be with implementing a solution in similar scope, size, complexity, and magnitude to the telehealth activities that IHS intends to provide with the resulting product. The posting noted that the solution must support a minimum of 2,000 health care providers within 12 IHS Geographical Areas and a weekly average number of audio or video telehealth conferences of 30,000.
IHS also noted that the proposed solution needs to be FedRAMP certified or meets the requirements to become FedRAMP certified within 60 days of the contract period of performance start date. If solutions are not already FedRAMP certified, the respondent must include a feasible plan to achieve the FedRAMP requirement. IHS noted that it will not sponsor a new FedRAMP Authority to Operate.
In recognition of the lack of broadband access on some parts of Tribal land, IHS is looking for a solution that is optimized for end-users primarily located in rural areas where users have slow network or internet connectivity speeds and high latency. Additionally, it wants a product that can switch from audio/video to just audio when the Internet connection becomes weak or disrupted. Additionally, it wants respondents to provide the process for reconnecting dropped calls.
