Managed Informatics Platform for Research Access to Data

This notice is not an invitation for formal expressions of interest.

The purpose is to commence a pre-procurement market awareness before the start of a formal procurement process (for which a separate contract notice will be issued).

UK Biobank is an international resource for health research with 500,000 participants and offers access to researchers seeking to understand the determinants of disease.

The resource will likely comprise over 15 Petabytes of health-related data by 2025.

To date, UK Biobank has provided data to approved researchers by way of download.

The scale of these increasingly large and complex datasets, which make up UK Biobank, will mean that it is no longer tenable to use this download model.

This will require the development of a new managed service 'informatics platform' to enable researchers to access and analyse the UK Biobank data.

UK Biobank considers that the development of this platform will happen in stages.

In the first instance, it is seeking to appoint a supplier to implement the first phase of UK Biobank's project delivery plan - scheduled provisionally for Q1/Q2 2020 - for a managed informatics platform to provide secure access to certain of the different types of UK Biobank data via discrete project spaces that allow a range of analytical tools to be utilised.

Subsequently, UK Biobank intends to explore the available options, including that the provision of the platform and the underlying storage are a) bifurcated and b) provided by multiple providers.

This notice is not an invitation for formal expressions of interest.

The purpose is to commence a pre-procurement market awareness phase before the start of a formal procurement process (for which a separate contract notice will be issued).

This market engagement phase will take the form of UK Biobank issuing a document that outlines its considerations for provision of a managed informatics platform for access to its data, accompanied by a set of questions against which it would welcome feedback from potential suppliers.

In addition, as part of this exercise, UK Biobank will hold one-to-one meetings undertaken by video conference, on Tuesday 12th November, and which will provide an opportunity for UK Biobank to consult with and receive feedback from potential suppliers.

The background information to UK Biobank and its prospective procurement is being made available with this Prior Information Notice, along with the specific questions to which UK Biobank now invites advance written responses from potential suppliers.