The Veterans Affairs Department awarded CACI International Inc. a $91 million contract to develop a record-sharing system to support VA's Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) program.
Under the five-year contract, the IT firm will develop a system to consolidate the medical records of military service members in an electronic database, which will be available to all VA and Defense Department facilities as well as private health care providers that treat service members, CACI said in an announcement Oct. 25.
VLER is the Obama administration's effort to develop a single electronic system to track the medical, benefits and administrative records of service member from when they are inducted into the military throughout the remainder of their lives as veterans.
VA, DOD and private providers will use the standards of the nationwide health information network (NHIN) to enable the secure record sharing via the Internet that will be required by the system.
By integrating VA, DOD, and private health care provider data, VLER will improve continuity of care by making sure that no veteran has a delay in service as a result of the transition from active duty to veteran status, said Paul Cofoni, CACI president and CEO.
As part of the VLER program, CACI will support at least 10 complementary health-related IT programs which are being brought under a single management structure.
These include the NHIN infrastructure and connecting services; the Health Data Repository, a database of clinical information that resides on one or more independent platforms; and the Clinical Health Data Repository, a joint effort between the DOD and VA to exchange computable outpatient pharmacy and drug allergy information for shared patients, Cofoni said.
In another contract announcement Oct. 25, Business Computer Applications Inc., a provider of digital health care technology, said it has been selected as one of the vendors that will vie for information management services work as part of a broad $5 billion 10-year IT contract from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The work will include developing and integrating IT, data collection and analysis, health IT and public health informatics.
