Army-affiliated Medical Group Seeks Tech for ‘Virtual Care Wards’ Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC), a biomedical association working with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, has filed a request for project proposals (RFPP) looking for tech-driven partners to support the rapid development of ‘virtual critical care wards.’

According to the RFPP, which was released on Friday, the aim is to help relieve the strain intensive care units and health systems are facing due to the the COVID-19 pandemic, by creating and deploying a “cloud-based, low-resource, stand-alone health information management system for the creation and coordination of flexible and extendable virtual critical care wards” — which the MTEC is referring to as the National Emergency Telecritical Care Network (NETCCN).

With the RFPP, the MTEC is looking to create virtual wards of patients that can be managed together remotely in a system capable of deployment in both traditional healthcare facilities like hospitals and clinics, as well as at temporary facilities like field hospitals.

“The vision for this program is to extend local tele-critical care capability sets to a broader, flexible network—first locally, then step-wise regionally and nationally—that can be leveraged wherever there is need,” officials write in the RFPP.

The aim is to move fast with this, and the organization has set a 10-day deadline for white papers that “specifically address providing existing technologies available for other use cases that can be rapidly adapted to establishing” the NETCCN.

In recent weeks as the COVID-19 crisis has swept across the globe, a number of biometric technology companies have come forth with both new and refreshed remote patient monitoring solutions that look to provide relief to overburdened health networks everywhere. In any case, MTEC looks to specifically hear from entities that are able to provide cloud-based data storage solutions, mobile communication tech, clinician-facing portals, mobile-based apps, and real-time basic documentation, data collection and reporting capabilities.

In a phased approach, MTEC aims to deploy the first system within 45 days of award, with a refined system ready within six months, and a final system within 18.

The U.S. Defense Department has up to $7 million available to fund this work, and the due date for the ehnanced white papers is set for April 27th.

Source: NextGov

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April 21, 2020 – by Tony Bitzionis