The Veterans Administration (VA) awarded a sole source contract (VA7977N-14-C-0013) to St Jude Medical Inc. in Saint Paul Minnesota for $348,000 for their remote monitoring system. The company is focusing on cardiac rhythm management, atrial fibrillation, cardiovascular, and neuromodulation.
Their product portfolio includes implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization therapy devices, pacemakers, remote monitoring systems, cardiac mapping and visualization systems, catheter-based ablation devices, vascular closure devices, structural heart products, spinal cord stimulation, and peripheral nerve and deep brain stimulation devices.
In examining the proposal submitted by Jude Medical, VA determined that while there are other remote monitoring devices in the commercial market place, no other company produces a device that has the same unique patented features capable of monitoring any manufacturer’s device.
Today, the VA is aggressively involved in cardiac monitoring for their veteran population. For example, the VA’s National Cardiac Device Surveillance Program (VANCDSP) provides remote monitoring for implanted cardiac devices including pacemakers, and cardiac resynchronization therapy.
At present, about 18,000 veterans have devices being remotely monitored by VANCDSP. The monitoring system also provides for programmatic and technical support for monitoring recalls and alerts.
The VA collects both clinical and administrative data from the Veterans Health Administration. The system monitors veterans to learn how their cardiac devices are functioning through the VA’s EHR system. The administrative data collected on devices is collected through the VA’s Austin Technology Center through the VA’s National Patient Care database.
The VHA is going in a new direction and setting up the “Cardiovascular Assessment Reporting and Tracking” (CART) program to integrate the data collection into the process of care. New clinical CART modules are being developed to provide peripheral arterial intervention.
Also CART-EP is being developed to integrate data on Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD) with data from pacemaker surveillance programs. The CART-CP is another module being developed that will be able to track in-hospital patients when cardiac arrest occurs.
The VA is presently working on the “Cardiovascular Assessment Reporting and Tracking for Catheter Labs” (CART-CL) system. Right now, the National VHA Catheter databases includes software for data entry and reports are generated for the VA’s 75 Catheter Labs.
The goal is to integrate each individual labs data into regular clinical care and into the EMR system to create standardized pre-catheter, catheter, and PCI reports. The VA plans to take the next step and join the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) so that the agency will no longer need 75 databases for 75 catheter labs.
The contracting officer within the VA’s National Acquisition Office is Timothy Richards, at timothy.richards@va.gov or call (708) 786-4959.For more information on St. Jude Medical, go to www.sjm.com.