A defense think tank says the government may regret its plan to lock the U.S. Defense Department into a 10-year contract with an electronic health-record vendor.
The Center for a New American Security released a report that sharply criticizes the department’s procurement process for a new EHR system, which is expected to cost $11 billion over the life of the contract and has attracted fierce competition among four bidding teams.
“DOD is about to procure another major electronic (health-record) system that may not be able to stay current with—or even lead—the state-of-the-art, or work well with parallel systems in the public or private sector,” warn authors, who include retired Gen. H. Hugh Shelton and former Veterans Affairs Chief Technology Officer Peter Levin.
“We are concerned that a process that chooses a single commercial ‘winner,’ closed and proprietary, will inevitably lead to vendor lock and health-data isolation,” they conclude.
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