DoD Request for Information and Vendor Demos of EHR Systems

It's interesting that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Military Health System decided to announce a request for information and demonstrations of electronic health record (EHR) systems to replace its legacy EHR systems during the government shutdown. The notice about the request for information and vendor demos for a potential replacement of their CHCS/AHLTA systems were quietly posted just a week ago in FedBizOps.Gov and closes today - October 9, 2013.

According to the announcement, DoD is interested in the current state and capabilities of an enterprise EHR systems which are available "off-the-shelf" - including VistA solutions. DoD is interested in learning about EHR products that address patient care plans, decision support, order management, medication, workflow, clinical documentation management and can be positioned to support clinicians in all care environments to include outpatient, inpatient, emergency, intensive care, and remote facilities.

The DoD is also interested in whether an EHRS product has been recognized or rated by third-party commercial research firms such as KLAS or Gartner, whether the product has attained certification and are listed on the Office of the National Coordinator Certified Health IT Product List, if the product has attained at least Stage 1 of Meaningful Use, possesses substantial commercial market share, or has been recognized by third party user surveys as relatively easy to learn, adopt, use and maintain.

Interested vendors will be invited to provide an overview and demonstration to the Government of their EHRS product(s) which have been successfully deployed to large-scale, geographically-distributed medical systems and facilities. The purpose of this event is to gather information regarding commercial EHRS capabilities; the information may be utilized in the development of future DoD requirement(s) and/or solicitation(s).

The Government plans to host demonstrations during the week of October 21, 2013, in the Greater Metropolitan Washington D.C. area. A completed application is required to be considered for vendor participation. There is no application fee; however, all costs incurred in responding to this announcement will be solely the responsibility of each individual vendor.

Gartner, KLAS, Forrester and other commercial research firms have traditionally avoided recognizing open source EHR systems like VistA. Fortunately, Open Health News has been reporting on VistA for many years now and is about to release a detailed report on the installation and use of VistA in over 2000 healthcare facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

To see the official notice about the request for information for DoD Electronic Health Record System (EHRS) - Vendor Demonstrations, go to FedBizOps.Gov web site.