Google joins PwC's Vista-based bid for military health records

Google joined the list of companies involved in the competition for the $11 billion military health record contract, set to be awarded in June. The search engine giant has been tapped by the team led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is offering an open source solution based on a commercially available open-source version of the Vista health record system used by the Department of Veteran's Affairs.

The roster of companies on the PwC bid also includes integrator General Dynamics IT, and electronic health records vendors DSS Inc. and Medsphere Systems.

The bids from PwC and other teams competing for the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) are already filed. Google's addition doesn't alter PwC's offering, which it has dubbed the Defense Operational Readiness Health System. But Google web-based private cloud and collaboration tools could improve security and speed of the system and lower costs, according to a PwC spokesperson. In addition, Google Enterprise Search product could facilitate the retrieval and use of both structured and unstructured data inside the EHR system.

"Google can assist us in delivering a cost-effective and efficient solution to serve the health care needs of our military," said Scott McIntyre, PwC’s Global and U.S. Public Sector Leader.

The news comes a week after IBM and Epic announced they were preparing to start work on the DHMSM system by running an instance of the Epic health record on a secure, IBM-operated data center.

Other bidders include a team led by Leidos, based on the Cerner health record, and a team made up of Computer Sciences Corp., Hewlett Packard and health record vendor Allscripts.