IBM and Epic have announced formation of an advisory group of industry experts as part of their bid for the coveted Department of Defense electronic health record contract.
The contract to modernize the DoD's electronic health records system could be worth as much as $11 billion through 2023. The advisory group members have volunteered to share their experience with governance, interoperability, analytics, research, population health, behavioral health, online patient self-service, and more, according to an announcement.
Members of the advisory board include healthcare organizations such as the American Medical Informatics Association, Duke Medicine, Geisinger Health System and the Yale-New Haven Hospital, according to a fact sheet. Veterans also will share their experiences with the group.
Though the Department of Veterans Affairs had been expected to submit a bid, it was notably absent at the October deadline.
The bidding teams include:
- Computer Sciences Corp., partnered with HP and EHR developer Allscripts
- EHR vendor Cerner, Leidos, Accenture Federal, and Intermountain Healthcare
- PricewaterhouseCoopers with General Dynamics Information Technology, DSS Inc. and Medsphere
- IBM and Epic Systems
The contract is expected to be assigned in June 2015. The DoD's current system serves 10 million beneficiaries.
In addition to naming a new chief medical information officer to its federal healthcare practice, IBM previously announced it would be bringing its Watson supercomputer technology to the table.
Lawmakers have been trying to hold the feet of DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs to the fire in a quest for interoperability between the two systems. However, reports sent to Congress fully satisfied only one of six statutory conditions placed on the project, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office last summer.
Epic, however, has been criticized as being particularly ill-suited to data sharing, accusations it's been trying to quell.
To learn more:
- find an announcement
- here's the fact sheet (.pdf)