A Medical Device Daily

EDS (Palo Alto, California) has signed an $8.1 million, 12-month add-on contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Military Health System to make technical enhancements to several Defense Health Information Management Systems (DHIMS).

The work will improve the quality and delivery of healthcare for recovering U.S. service members under the DoD Wounded Warrior care initiative.

The contract extends the 16-year relationship between EDS and the Military Health System's DHIMS, the family of systems that manages and maintains the military's electronic health record – currently, the largest and most comprehensive electronic health record in the world.

"Enhancing the accessibility of deployed service members' medical data is critical for ensuring healthcare providers have instant access to their patients' most vital medical records," said Dennis Stolkey, senior VP of U.S. Public Sector at EDS. "EDS takes great pride in providing the Defense Department's Military Health System with state-of-the-art health services for U.S. soldiers and their families."

Technical enhancements to DHIMS applications are expected to improve the management of the military's electronic health records, increase collaboration across service lines, and facilitate user workflow between various caregivers and case managers.

Enhancements to Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application will improve information sharing between the DoD and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. They also will enable clinical case managers to have better access to data about beneficiaries' conditions, prescriptions, diagnostic tests and additional information essential to improving care quality.

In other agreements/contracts news, Siemens Healthcare (Malvern, Pennsylvania) and SurgiVision (Irvine, California) reported an agreement for the co-development and commercialization of a real-time magnetic resonance image (MRI)-guided cardiac electrophysiology (EP) system. The two companies are collaborating with the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) to bring to the clinic a fully integrated, ground-breaking EP MRI system that promises to improve conventional catheter-based cardiac procedures. "Both companies have long believed in the power of MR to play a significant role in EP procedures. Our collective vision is to provide the physician with the ability to monitor the EP therapy in real-time and to visualize the lesions," said Christine Lorenz, MD, director, Center for Applied Medical Imaging at Siemens.