ATLANTA, 8 Dec. 2005. Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) announced today it was awarded $68.4 million in contracts in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Public Health Informatics' BioSense program.
BioSense is a CDC-led initiative to provide early detection of a possible bio-terrorism attack or naturally occurring disease outbreak and to provide situational awareness to public health responders during any such event.
The first contract for software development and technical support of the BioSense system is a time and materials award with a base year worth $7.3 million and also two option years worth $8.7 million each.
The second contract, a cost-plus-fixed-fee award, to implement clinical and health indicator data feeds to BioSense from health organizations across the United States, has a ceiling value of $34 million. The combined potential value of both awards is $68.4 million.
"Over the next 33 months, SAIC expects to implement over 120 BioSense 'data feeds' that can provide the national coverage necessary to detect and characterize a possible bio-terrorist and/or natural health threat," said David Groves, SAIC vice president for Public Health Informatics. "This data will come from major healthcare providers and other health-related data sources, including pharmacies and medical laboratories nationwide."
SAIC will deploy teams to work with volunteer healthcare organizations to integrate the necessary hardware and software to enable transmission of real-time streams of health monitoring data to the CDC.
SAIC teammates in that effort include:
* First Consulting Group, Falls Church, Va.;
* McKesson Corp., Alpharetta, Ga.; and
* Healthcare Enterprise Innovations, Arlington, Va.
Under the software development contract, SAIC will continue the work of developing and refining the BioSense Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting application. A central objective for BioSense is to provide statistical analyses and data visualization capabilities to detect a sudden shift in community health status and to support public health officials and scientists in providing early and effective public health response.
SAIC has worked closely with the CDC since 2003 to rapidly design and implement BioSense and to address the urgent need for an initial systems capability to collect data from national health data sources, including the Department of Defense, and expedite initial detection and quantification of possible bio-terrorism attacks and outbreaks.
"SAIC is proud to continue to support the CDC in the important BioSense initiative to help protect our nation's citizens from the growing threat of bio-terrorism," said Robert McCord, SAIC senior vice president and general manager of the Health Solutions Business Unit.
SAIC is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States, with annual revenues of $7.2 billion and more than 43,000 employees in over 150 cities worldwide. SAIC engineers and scientists solve complex technical problems in national security, homeland security, energy, the environment, space, telecommunications, health care, and logistics. For more information, see www.saic.com.
