bringing interoperability to military and civilian healthcare providers

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Perspective: bringing interoperability to military and civilian healthcare providers

Channel:  Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com Date: January 15, 2008 E-mail to a Friend  

Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Information Technology (IT) sector, Conemaugh Health Systems and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) are partnering to launch the Military Interoperable Digital Hospital Testbed (MIDHT) in Johnstown, Penn.


The program will develop a health information platform upon which military and civilian healthcare providers will be able to share electronic health records of military personnel.


One of the biggest issues facing returning servicemen and women today is being released at home and becoming lost in the system, oftentimes with no access to their records, said Robert Cothren, division director for Northrop Grumman’s Clinical IS practice.


The end result is the loss of military personnel’s continuum of care.


Phase I, which will conclude in September 2008, will establish the demonstration and capability of the partners to build out the exchange of information between private sector physicians and the military site.


Phase II, the pilot project, will involve a richer set of data and will be rolled out to a larger number of physicians from the end of 2008 through 2009. Northrop Grumman will study the impact on workflow and how the system works.


The Johnstown, Penn., location is critical, said Cothren, because it is a good representation of rural America. “So much of healthcare is delivered in rural areas,” he said.


Pennsylvania has more National Guard and reservists on active duty in Afghanistan and Iraq than any other state in the union, according to Bruce Walker, director of strategic planning for Northrop Grumman IT’s Civilian Agencies group. “Johnstown is the perfect testbed,” he said. “There is a lot of synergy.”


In developing the interoperable prototype, the partners will ensure that patient privacy is preserved. “These records will last a lifetime. They will outlast any system,” said Walker. As the records migrate from system to system – the DoD, the Department of Veterans Administration (VA) and the private sector – policy interactions will need to bridge the three different privacy models.


Cothren noted that Northrop Grumman will leverage lessons learned and the technology it developed for its nationwide health information exchange prototype for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. In August 2007, the DoD awarded the company a contract to deploy, enhance and maintain its Clinical and Health Data Repository initiative, which will allow the DoD to seamlessly exchange health information with the VA.


In 2005, Northrop Grumman successfully deployed the first bidirectional, real-time electronic patient record sharing capability between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Administration with its Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, making the company uniquely qualified to tackle this next project.


Walker added that the support of Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, was instrumental in moving the project into the community of Johnstown.


Ultimately, said Walker, “We think the model in Johnstown will be transportable (to other sites).”