WASHINGTON – Harris Corporation, an international communications and information technology company, has been awarded a multi-year $80.3 million contract by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Technology Acquisition Center to help integrate electronic health records for two of the world’s largest healthcare systems -- the VA and the Department of Defense (DoD). Harris will develop the system’s key Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), which will be released in early 2014.
The contract represents a breakthrough in interoperability as the VA and DoD join forces to streamline administration and recordkeeping, exchange health information, contain costs, track and manage care and enhance outcomes for millions of active duty and retired military personnel and their families.
“The VA/DoD electronic health record project promotes health information sharing across the full spectrum of military service—from active to retired service duty,” said Jim Traficant, president, Harris Healthcare Solutions. “It will enhance the health status of millions of service members whose move from military healthcare to the VA—or from one VA facility to another—sometimes involves waits and duplicate diagnostic testing. The SOA Suite architecture will create an enabling platform for unprecedented integration and communications to ensure a continuum of care across a service member’s lifetime.”
The SOA Suite contract awarded to Harris is part of the VA's T4 (Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology) contract vehicle aimed at streamlining VA operations, including the patient care delivered at more than 150 VA hospitals. Harris was one of fifteen prime contractors selected for T4 in September 2011.
The VA and DoD have several disparate healthcare information systems including VistA, CHCS and AHLTA, as well as two hundred local data centers. Under this award, Harris will provide a single architecture and joint execution strategy for the two agencies. The SOA Suite will serve as the standard platform to migrate legacy systems, applications and sharing capabilities. Harris will deploy a common federated middleware as a secure, virtualized, intelligent infrastructure allowing best-of-breed “Cloud First” services for all members of the DoD and VA healthcare systems. Harris plans to work with the DoD and VA to develop a demonstration site by September 2012, with full site deployment slated for August 2013 and full SOA release by early 2014.
The SOA Suite Program will leverage the success, skills and resources Harris used in the deployment of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) NextGen Program – System Wide Information Management (SWIM), which also is based on a combination of COTS software with Harris developed and open source applications. Harris provides mission critical information and value-added services in a multi-level secure, high availability (.9999) and policy driven manner to the FAA, airlines and authorized interagency consumers. Harris will bring similar value and reliability to the VA and DoD healthcare enterprise through the SOA contract.
In healthcare solutions, Harris provides enterprise intelligence solutions and services for government and commercial customers — including systems integration, intelligent infrastructure, interoperability, imaging, and other IT solutions. A leader in federal healthcare IT integration, Harris products, systems and services improve healthcare outcomes by assuring that critical medical and benefits information is delivered with security and privacy to the right person, on the right device, at the point of care.
About Harris Corporation
Harris is an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets in more than 150 countries. Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the company has approximately $6 billion of annual revenue and about 17,000 employees — including nearly 7,000 engineers and scientists. Harris is dedicated to developing best-in-class assured communications® products, systems, and services. Additional information about Harris Corporation is available at www.harris.com.
