DOD Health Record Procurement To 'Lead The Way' On Interoperability

A lot has changed in the military health care landscape over the past year. A new cross-cutting organization, the Defense Health Agency, was launched as a military shared service. Since being announced in September 2013, DHA has opened nine of its 10 shared service areas, including health IT. The tenth -- public health – is set to go live later this month.

Among the biggest tasks facing DHA is launching and managing a new, modernized electronic health record system that is the subject of a major, high-profile DoD procurement.

The health record procurement, the Healthcare Management System Modernization (the acronym DHMSM is pronounced "dim sum"), is being managed outside of the IT realm by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. The acquisition is being treated "with the same care and approach as in a weapons system," Christopher Miller, the program executive officer, said at an industry event hosted by AFCEA's Northern Virginia chapter on Sept. 9. "This is not just another IT program. This is about really thinking through and changing how we deliver health care in the military health system," Miller said...