The Utah Procurement Code provides that a procurement may be made without competition when the University determines that there is only one source that can reasonably meet the University’s need for the required supply or service, as described in Utah Code Ann. § 63G-6a-802.
The Purchasing Department has received the following request for sole source procurement
Current date: 20250102
Product and/or Service to be purchased: Explorer Summit Processor System
Sole Source Supplier: Ripple Neuromed
Earliest Proposed Purchase Date: January 03, 2025
Buyer Name: Kayla McMullen
Sole Source Justification:
The product, specifically a portable, wireless electroencephalography (EEG) system with low-latency, high sampling rate, live data streaming and integrated multimodal, modular closed loop capabilities, is only available from this vendor.
Summary of work: currently, states of general anesthesia and sedation are induced and maintained pharmacologically, with clinicians manually titrating medications based on vital signs and limited visualization of frontal EEG signals. We are building a system to enable 1. Customizable, open-source visualizations of EEG signals; 2. Closed loop titration of anesthetic drugs based on frontal EEG signals. 3. Non-pharmacological modulation of anesthetic effects using muiltimodal closed-loop neurostimulation (acoustic, electromagnetic, and ultrasonic modalities). There currently does not exist a “next best option” that provides all of the listed capabilities in a single system. Foregoing any of the listed capabilities would compromise the feasibility of creating and implementing an integrated system for closed loop brain arousal state control.
Comments on how the Ripple Neuromed device specs are unique and applied to our work:
- Wireless: reduce implementation barriers in clinical settings (operating room and intensive care unit) that are currently cluttered with wired moinitors.
- High sampling rate: time-locking neurostimulation to specific phases of ongoing EEG oscillations requires a high data sampling rate (≥ 250 Hz).
- Low-latency: time-locking neurostimulation to specific phases of ongoing EEG oscillations also requires low latency for live data streaming. Closed loop anesthetic drug titration also requires low-latency data streaming to ensure accurate brain state estimation and appropriate up- or down-titration.
- Multimodal, modular closed loop: one of the main strengths of our approach is the synergy of multiple closed loop systems integrated into a unified model of brain arousal state control. A system with modular closed loop capabilities will allow closed loop drug titration to work in harmony with multiple modalities of neurostimulation. In the clinical setting, this ensures that closed loop drug control accounts for ongoing neurostimulation. In the offline data analysis setting, it ensures that signals from the EEG, drug titration and neurostimulation are time-locked, allowing for time-series and trajectory analysis across control systems.
- Existing API’s for Matlab and Python will enable rapid implementation of existing analysis scripts.
Variation cannot be made due to the following reasons;
- Loosening live-streaming criteria, specifically sampling rate and latency, would compromise the ability to perform real-time closed-loop control.
- Loosening wireless criteria would compromise implementation success in clinical environments (operating room, intensive care unit) which are already cluttered with many wires. Overlapping wires with other clinical monitors (e.g. electrocardiogram, pulse oximetry) also introduces artifacts into live data streaming which can compromise the ability to perform real-time closed-loop control.
- Loosening multimodal modular closed loop capability criteria would limit our ability to combine and integrate multiple closed loop functions into a single, time-locked system.
- Loosening API criteria (Matlab and Python) would compromise our ability to leverage expertise in these programming languages.