Help Wanted: Cybersecurity Contractor
Feds seek help with healthcare assessmentThe contractor also will create and test risk mitigation strategies. The results of the project will help support development of federal policies.
The 18-month project will focus on "creating a safe and secure health information technology ecosystem that spans the public and private healthcare sectors," says Deborah Lafky, Ph.D., who will manage the project for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. ONC is a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Preliminary notice
HHS posted a very preliminary "presolicitation" notice for the program on Feb. 16. The notice states, "The purpose of this contract is to carry out a sequence of related activities with the goal of understanding security risks to health information technology, planning and executing risk mitigation strategies, testing certain risk mitigation strategies, communicating to stakeholders the results, lessons learned, and actions that can be taken to reduce risk in HIT, which will create the foundation for policy development."
The project is designed to help support the goals of the HITECH Act, which provides Medicare and Medicaid financial incentives for using electronic health records plus a variety of grants to promote the exchange of clinical information.
The notice states that ramping up the creation and exchange of EHRs, "steps up the need to protect these strategic information resources against cybersecurity threats."
To view the notice, visit www.fbo.gov and look for solicitation number OS28871.