Google and PwC are teaming up to bid on a cloud service to help improve global sharing of electronic medical health records for the US Military
Google and Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) are teaming up to bid to develop a healthcare management platform that would see the two firms, with the help of a number of large electronic medical health record vendors, modernise the US Department of Defense’s military health system using the cloud to share medical health records globally.
The move follows a partnership between Google and PwC announced late last year, which will see PwC offer its deep vertical expertise and work closely with its clients to tailor Google Apps for Work to their specific business processes and needs, and help them optimise their operations.
The proposed healthcare management platform would replace and modernise the existing platform used by the Military Health System (MHS), which currently weaves together the complex web of direct and indirect healthcare delivery services and stakeholders that support more than 9.7 million beneficiaries including active duty, retirees and their dependents.
The companies said the proposed platform would allow healthcare professionals inside and outside government to more efficiently treat service members and their families by enabling access to a single repository of medical health records on-demand, globally.
“Google is known for its expertise in innovative, secure and open technologies, and the power of Internet scale. Their capabilities can complement our proposed open-architecture solution and bring added value, agility and flexibility to the new Military Health System,” said Scott McIntyre, PwC’s global and US Public Sector Leader. “Google can assist us in delivering a cost-effective and efficient solution to serve the healthcare needs of our military.”
The two companies will be teaming up with commercial healthcare technology specialists DSS, Inc. and Medsphere Systems Corporation, MedicaSoft, and systems integrator General Dynamics Information Technology for the EMHR platform. The firms stressed the proposed cloud-based platform would embrace an open-architecture, ensuring the federal government isn’t locked in to a single vendor.
The project is notable for its scale and complexity, and could be used as a model for US patient medical records sharing in the future. Most electronic medical health record platforms are set up primarily for sharing within states, but interstate sharing is typically more bureaucratic and time-consuming. The project comes in response to one of the most comprehensive reviews of the MHS in the history of the American Military, announced in May last year.
