DHA embarks on health data management contract strategy

The Defense Health Agency has started to sketch out a plan for hiring single or multiple contractors that can help integrate health data from multiple sources, including vendor-developed and Veterans Affairs Department-linked applications.

At the moment, DHA does not have a finalized enterprise strategy for how and where this program data would reside and be managed for the agency’s usage. DHA is first looking at viable hosting and data management models as the agency evolves toward a longer-term approach, according to a sources sought notice posted Thursday.

DHA is citing clinical, administrative, operational, financial, scheduling, encounter, assessment, document and analytics as among the types of data it wants industry help in maintaining and operating.

The notice asks respondents to describe their capabilities for ingesting, normalizing, exchanging, reconciling and making available data from both vendor and VA-connected applications.

Some models of interest to DHA include environments managed by the agency itself, the Defense Department’s enterprise cloud environments, other government cloud environments, vendor-hosted environments, hybrid architectures and federated data approaches.

The request for information’s questionnaire covers topics pertaining to ownership, interoperability, cybersecurity, privacy, hosting authorization, records management, continuity of operations, vendor transition, and long-term sustainment.

Responses to the RFI are due by 12 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 26.