Planned IT Investment at the Defense Health Agency in Fiscal 2018

The recent publication of the fiscal 2018 budget request by the Trump administration has yielded some interesting insights into the information technology investments planned by the Defense Health Agency (DHA) in the coming year. These investments will include, as expected, a big focus on the modernization of the Department of Defense’s electronic health records, but they will also include funding for modernizing the DHA’s IT infrastructure and developing a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for the Military Health System. Here are the most important funding initiatives to know.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M)

• $118.7M for continued deployment of DoD Healthcare Management System Modernization (i.e., MHS GENESIS and Joint Operation Medicine Information System (JOMIS)).
• $17M to establish a single Military Health System ERP system.
• $6.5M transferred from Air Force to support the Desktop-to-Data Center (D2D) single healthcare IT Infrastructure. Capabilities will include Common Directory Services, Enterprise Management, and a Standard Medical Desktop.
• $110.2M less for Information Management programs, a decline driven by IT optimization and consolidation efforts across the Military Health System. The budget provides no details on which systems or capabilities are being reduced.
• An overall reduction of $64.7M in funding required due to the “strategic resourcing of contract services” (i.e., contract consolidation).

Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E)

• $65.3M to support the ongoing development of JOMIS. This increase is based on updated life-cycle cost estimates.
• $13.5M to support the DHA’s transition to a single financial and accounting ERP solution.
• $1.8M for Health IT Shared Service investments.
• $256.1M less for MHS GENESIS after limited deployment in FY 2017 and prior to Full Deployment Decision in FY 2018.
• $3.5M less for the MHS Procurement, enterprise-wide IT function.
• $1.9M less for Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE) support due to planned completion of enhanced query capability and advanced geospatial analysis.

Procurement

• $469.1M for the purchase of commercial software licenses for MHS GENESIS and multiple deployments of the modernized Electronic Health Record to Military Treatment Facilities after the Full Deployment Decision is approved by the Milestone Decision Authority.
• $19.8M in Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Procurement funding to provide additional Compute and Storage Management Support (CSMS) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) support for non-clinical End User Devices (EUDs). These activities are in preparation for the roll out of MHS GENESIS.
• $9M for the transition to a single financial and accounting ERP system.
• $5.9M to support site readiness, change management, and user training activities post-Initial Operating Capability deployment for JOMIS.
• $1.5M for moving/upgrading the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA) from Oracle 11g to Oracle 12c.
• $4.1M less in Health Artifact and Image Management Solution (HAIMS) Procurement funding due to the migration of archived data to cheaper tiered storage and refocusing of the HAIMS storage refresh on a smaller footprint/best value approach. This Procurement reduction offset a need for increased Service Treatment Record (STR) sustainment activities at the Records Processing Centers, STR Department of Defense/Veterans Affairs interface support, and clinical operations support.