Prior Information Notice: Digital pathology Northern Norway Regional Health Authority

The contracting authority, the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority, would like tenders for a digital pathology system that will be used by the laboratories at the underlying health trusts Nordland Hospital Trust and the University Hospital Trust of North Norway, in laboratories in Bodø and Tromsø respectively. The system will be used to analyse, measure, and interpret digital (histology) sections, as well as store and archive them. Furthermore, the system will be used for distributing cases to the pathologists, for interaction between the pathologists in the region (and/or cross-regional), and or interaction with other medical personnel through so-called 'multidisciplinary team meetings' (MDT meetings).

The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority currently has the following system related to or around pathology:

- Sympathy LIMS is currently used by Nordland Hospital Trust and the University Hospital Trust of Northern Norway. 

- Scanners (1 Hamamatsu Nanozoomer S60 in Bodø), however a new system must be able to support other types of scanners. There will be a separate procurement of scanners at a later date.

- DIPS EPJ: Regional system that communicates with LIMS on referrals and result reports, as well as functioning as PAS.

- Sectra PACS: Regional system for saving radiology and other multimedia files, it could be an advantage for use (for MDT meetings) and for technical operation/management if the system could be integrated with this system. Integration with Sectra PACS is not a condition for submitting a tender as long as the tenderer can offer a secure and functional saving and archive system for digital sections, including metadata.

- The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority's integration service: Handle integrations between systems in the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority via standardised interface, primarily HL7 FHIR.

The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority uses Sympathy (Tieto) as the LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System). This system is primarily a work tool for pathology. As a starting point, the expectation is that Sympathy will be kept, and will be upgraded to a new version. Sympathy is planned to be upgraded to version 5.9.

LIMS will soon be consolidated with a joint database.

During the contract period, in the medium term, LIMS Sympathy could be replaced with a new system.

The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority is the provider of ICT services, infrastructure, and hardware for the region. The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority operates a joint regional computer centre that is located in Tromsø. The system will be installed in the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority's computer centres 1 and 2 with redundancy.