An upcoming version of an electronic military medical tool will allow health providers in theaters of operation to view a patient's entire longitudinal medical record.
Theater health providers currently have to access two separate systems--the Theater Medical Data Store (TMDS) and AHLTA Warrior--to obtain complete information about a patient.
TMDS is a Web-based application used to view service members' medical treatment information recorded on the battlefield. AHLTA Warrior allows read-only access from the theater to a war-fighter's pre-deployment medical history by way of a virtual private network (VPN) connection to the Military Health System's central server.
The Army's Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) organization, which provides systems for recording theater medical encounters, is piloting the new version of the TMDS in Afghanistan, according to Lt. Col. William Geesey, the MC4 product manager.
"We're merging the two applications so we'll have one less application," Geesey said last week at a military medical conference sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA) in Washington, D.C.
MC4 has initiated other recent innovations to the electronic medical record systems used in Southwest Asia.
"What you see with EMRs in theater today is different than what we had two months ago," Geesey said.
One innovation introduced within the last two months attempts to close a gap in the electronic medical record when a patient is removed by medevac. An electronic template accessed by medevac medics captures data and creates an encounter in AHLTA-T, the military EMR used by health providers in theater.
Before, a gap in the electronic record often existed from the time a patient was evacuated from the initial aid station and until he arrived at the next level of care.
"This way we have a full record from the battlefield forward," said Geesey.
A second initiative involves connecting MC4 systems to the established military networks used in theater. This allows administrators to deal with system issues centrally.
"We can manage the system from the network," said Geesey. "We can view where problems are and fix them before users even know there is a problem."
