Request for Tender for the provision of services to undertake a laboratory capability audit, mapping and scoping project

The Department of Health is seeking to engage a contractor to undertake a scoping project which will examine the currently existing health emergency response capability and capacity of Australia’s public health laboratory arrangements.The Department of Health is seeking to engage a contractor to undertake a scoping project which will examine the currently existing health emergency response capability and capacity of Australia’s public health laboratory arrangements.

There are four key services that the successful Tenderer will be required to provide as part of the scoping project:

• capability audit to identify gaps in public health laboratory capacity and the overall state of national readiness to detect, identify , epidemiologically characterise and conduct other relevant testing, including where applicable, capability to undertake antibiotic susceptibility testing, on communicable diseases of public health importance, issues or opportunities from current arrangements which would enhance or reduce national response capability including but not limited to agents in the National Notifiable Disease List (NNDL) and the list of Security Sensitive Biological Agents (SSBAs);

• mapping exercise to design and produce a national map of Australia’s laboratory network.

• communications and information sharing assessment to examine how information is currently shared across national and jurisdictional laboratory networks from an IT infrastructure , data governance and process perspective; and

• stakeholder engagement.