The Military Health System Information Management/Information Technology Strategic Plan for 2010-2015 has been approved by the Senior Military Medical Advisory Committee. Leaders from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Health Affairs, TRICARE Management Activity, Joint Staff, Joint Task Force National Capital Region Medical, and the MHS Office of the Chief Information gathered last summer for a series of workshops to develop the plan.
While there have been strategic planning initiatives that have guided key priorities throughout the last ten years, this new effort by IM/IT leadership across the services, is the first formally approved plan since 1999.
The plan’s ten IM/IT goals that the Military Health Service (MHS) will focus on over the next five years are to:
• Provide rapid, affordable, secure delivery, and life cycle support for IT products and services
• Provide a comprehensive longitudinal EHR for all beneficiaries and care settings
• Implement a governance structure and process to enable effective and efficient use of resources
• Enhance enterprise intelligence through the use of enterprise tools, data, and services
• Advance the MHS personalized health agenda so that patients would have electronic access to their own records, have virtual visits, and be able to refill prescriptions online
• Advance IT interoperability using health, operational, and functional partners to create an accessible and complete virtual lifetime electronic record
• Show how the flow of funds from programming to execution can improve using better cost estimating methodologies
• Establish an innovation lifecycle management process to align IT innovation with MHS strategy
• Improve human capital management by having the right people with the right training and experience on the right job
• Develop processes, guidance, and standards to develop and integrate distributed services and applications so that time and money spent on products can be delivered rapidly and with a minimum amount of modification
In total, the planning team drafted 13 unique action plans and 14 performance measurements to define specific activities, deliverables, and milestones. In the months ahead, the IM/IIT strategic planning team will work with the action plan teams across the MHS and then draft updates, review the IM/IT measures, and determine if and how these measures should link to the broader MHS Value Measures dashboard.
For more information, go to www.health.mil/mhscio/governance.htm.
