Dive Brief:
- Cerner Corp. has secured a $50.7 million data hosting contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), despite objections from numerous companies like Amazon, IBM, and Computer Sciences Corp, according to a Healthcare IT News report.
- Since Cerner's restrictions prevent connections to its services by other companies; it wasn't even possible for the DOD to host its own EHR data.
- In fact, Pentagon officials said if they had chosen a different company for hosting, they would not have been able to use Cerner's historical data with the military EHR system, and they would have incurred more costs to establish a separate data setting.
Dive Insight:
The DOD's Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) involves Cerner upgrading the military's health IT system in 55 hospitals and 350 clinics for 9.6 million beneficiaries. Cerner will be working with Leidos for the new EHR system, as well as Accenture, Henry Schein, and several small businesses.
It was imperative that Cerner host the new EHR system in its data centers to allow full functioning of the system. The DOD said in a report in Federal Computer Week, "allowing a third party to host or have access to the Cerner proprietary data could adversely impact Cerner's financial viability and competitive market advantage."