The “Defense Health Information Technology Symposium” (DTIS) held July 31, 2019, https://dha.dtis.com sponsored by the Defense Health Agency https://www.health.mil, discussed the opportunities and challenges in integrating medical devices with MHS GENESIS.
According to Saad Khan, DHA’s Chief of Biomedical Devices, “Five clinical capabilities including anesthesia, laboratory, PACS, pharmacy, and physiological monitoring, and 17,359 individual medical devices are currently connected to legacy EHRs. They include heart, blood pressure, and anesthesia monitors in operating rooms.”
Khan as Head of the Medical Device Integration Task Force, is leading the task force to develop a list of devices that should be connected at the go-live stage of implementing MHS GENESIS. The task force is also working to ensure that devices connected to legacy systems will work with the new EHR.
Khan reports that the Task Force has identified medical devices that may require specialized hardware and/or interface and driver development to share data with MHS GENESIS in the go- live stage.
He said, “There will be massive standardization across the enterprise not only on the device, but how it is recorded on the EHR. These activities will include conducting a site assessment and a validation 18 months to two years prior to the go-live stage, assisting with the business case process for replacing vs. interfacing, and reviewing and validating all remedy tickets for new interface requirements.”
Kahn reports, “It’s vital for Military Treatment Facilities to provide a point of contact for the Task Force during the preparation and execution of onsite validation, ensure that equipment data records are complete and accurate, confirm all existing interfaces and use of middleware, gateways and servers, and ensure that personnel and vendors are trained to support testing and sustainment requests.”
Chris Harrington, Deputy Assistant Director of DHA’s Information Operations Solution Delivery Division, told the attendees, “The EHR deployment will require the adoption of numerous IT applications”. Examples include the Joint Patient Safety Reporting System, a web-based application to report events across the Military Health System and the VA, and the medical logistics IT platform known as Defense Medical Logistics Standards Support.
Go to https://www.health.mil/Military-Health-Topics/Technology/Military-Electronic-Health-Record/MHS-Genesis for more information on MHA Genesis.