Harris, an international communications and information technology company, has received a 10-month contract by Evolvent Technologies for ongoing enhancements to a military health network that exchanges patient records and images with Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities and other medical centers, the company announced.
Evolvent is the prime contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Healthcare Artifact and Image Management Solution (HAIMS).
This system will ultimately provide all hospitals, medical centers, and dental and medical clinics within the Military Health System (MHS) access to healthcare artifacts and images. Artifacts include any type of captured image other than diagnostic medical imagery, such as electronic scans of paper medical records, photographs, and handwritten notes. HAIMS also has the flexibility to handle documents, video, and audio files.
Harris is providing support in the areas of system development and software design for the Web-based HAIMS. The company recently completed similar tasks under the first phase of the HAIMS contract, which will be deployed at nine DoD user sites and a data center.
"Successful completion of HAIMS Phase I is a significant milestone in implementing the new MHS enterprise," said Jim Traficant, vice president of Harris Healthcare Solutions. "This brings MHS closer to a next-generation solution that will help save lives and improve care for our wounded warriors, veterans, and their families."
Under phase II, Harris will continue to support the enhancement of the functionality of the system. New features will include capabilities for performing bulk scanning of healthcare artifacts, allowing HAIMS to ingest artifacts and images provided by external healthcare systems and allowing HAIMS to interact within the DoD's electronic health records system. Phase II includes deployment of the system to an additional 16 sites.
Over the past several years, MHS has managed more than 750,000 in-theater medical encounters. The lack of ready access to artifact and image information over the course of treatment and recovery has posed a challenge to MHS providers. The HAIMS solution will enable the DoD and the VA to expand their interoperability by sharing health artifact and image information from the military theater all the way back to the clinic.
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