Military gives update on EHR progress

By Chip Means, New Media Manager

Think your EHR project is tough? A key healthcare IT figure at HIMSS10 will provide an update on the military’s electronic health record, which he says supports a “transient population and transient healthcare team.”

Army Col. Claude Hines, program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, will bring attendees inside the Military Health System’s mission to provide “a trusted comprehensive health information management system that seamlessly captures, manages and shares health information from the Theater of Operations to the home front and beyond.”

“The Way Forward for the Military’s EHR,” education session 74, will be held in room C101 on Tuesday, March 2, at 8:30AM.

Hines will discuss the system’s latest enhancements, outlining challenges in building, managing and maintaining one of the world’s largest EHRs.

“Our EHR currently contains more than 9.5 million Military Health System beneficiaries’ records,” Hines said. “I will discuss some of the challenges we face managing and sustaining an EHR of this magnitude – one that covers every time zone, supports 77,000 active users, comprises more than 110,000 end user devices, and houses more than 50 Terabytes of data.”

The military’s EHR began worldwide deployment in January 2004, according to Hines. The goal of the project is to provide medical readiness and to support all beneficiaries with continuity of care and administration of benefits, he noted.

Prior to the introduction of the military’s deployed EHR, Theater Medical Information Program (TMIP), there was no truly effective method of tracking medical information in a Theater of Operations, said Hines. “The technology leveraged in Theater has implications to the public health sector in the area of rural health with limited technology infrastructure and no and low communications environments.”

“This education session will be beneficial to all clinical and hospital administration professionals including hospital chief information officers, information technology system decision makers and anyone interested in learning more about the plight of managing a worldwide EHR,” Hines said.

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