The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) is looking for cloud-based data management services to help develop a large research resource to advance in breast cancer research.
The research resource will be part of the Confluence Project, which is aiming to build a large research resource for the scientific community by 2021 for studying the genetic architecture of breast cancer. As part of the project, NCI is working with Queen’s University, Belfast, which is developing the Male Breast Cancer Consortium (MBCC). The MBCC will serve as the largest consortium of epidemiological and clinical studies dedicated to studying breast cancer among males.
A Sources Sought notice on Beta.Sam.gov explained that data management support services are needed to contact institutions with existing studies on male breast cancer to discuss the inclusion of their data in the Confluence project. The support services will include collecting study information and data; setting up data transfer agreements; and performing data management, storage, and access services. The eventual contractor will also assist NCI with developing a secure cloud-hosted data platform.
The notice detailed several contractor requirements, including that it must have data governance permissions for the MBCC data and the contractor must also have experience performing data harmonization and data management. The contractor will also be tasked with managing data access after approval by the Data Access Coordinating Committee (DACC) for the male breast cancer studies. Additionally, the contractor will work with NCI to evaluate the feasibility and use of a secure cloud-hosted data platform for data submission, management, access, documentation, harmonization, and analyses. In the event a Cloud-hosted Data Platform is not feasible, the contractor would need to develop an alternative plan on how the contractor would provide efficient and secure data management, storage, and access services through NCI.
The initial contract would run from April 1, 2021-March 31, 2022, with the option of an additional 12 month period.
