LIFESAVING POSSIBILITIES


WEB DEMO


LTC Felicia D. Langel, director of USAMRMC’s SPO, reviews the NPI website with the website administrator Amanda Cecil, center, and team member Jean M. Shinbur. The NPI site allows SMEs at the USAMRMC to access innovative ideas submitted by vendors and evaluate their applicability to its mission. Vendors, in turn, can submit their products using a two-step, password-protected process. (Photo by Heather McDowell Duong, USAMRMC Public Affairs)


applicability to the mission. Participating businesses receive feed- back on USAMRMC’s interest in their submissions, usually in 60 days or less.


Te USAMRMC’s contracting element, the U.S. Army Medi- cal Research Acquisition Activity, launched NPI in December 2006. Te objective was to provide a starting point for indi- viduals who wished to present ideas or products but weren’t sure how to “crack the code” and formally collaborate with DOD. At the same time, technical experts were feeling inundated with requests for meetings with vendors to discuss products and were looking for a way to learn about new technologies in a fair and equitable way.


Because the site was geared toward fostering promising ideas and basic research rather than serving as a contracting tool, the USAMRMC’s Strategic Partnerships Office (SPO) assumed its management in 2011. NPI has helped introduce new medical tools that are now in use in the field, and the staff is continu- ing to make administrative and technical improvements to


82 Army AL&T Magazine April–June 2015


eliminate redundancies, streamline the review process and make the system more user-friendly.


GREASING THE SKIDS Successful operation of the NPI website involves close coordi- nation between vendors and product evaluators. A technically diverse cadre of approximately 30 SMEs reviews submissions. Tey include command personnel such as project managers, nurse consultants, program analysts and biomedical engineers, who assume this role in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities.


Reviewers provide formal feedback, referred to as dispositions, on each submission. In their dispositions, they provide insight and detail into whether a product meets their needs and, if not, why. If a product could prove useful with modifications, they provide that input. Ten they direct vendors to the resources they should explore to apply for funding to further explore the idea or develop the product, such as through a broad agency announcement, program announcement or solicitation.


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