Like their private sector counterparts, federal healthcare organizations want to personalize their services down to the individual patient level.
“We’re shifting from a one-size-fits-all approach to a personalized health care experience impacting service members and veterans,” said Dr. Jennifer Garrison, senior consultant at Maximus.
Getting to that level of service requires integrating several technologies that, separately, have already had an impact on health care delivery. Garrison said it requires both a human-centered design approach and the integration of enterprise systems.
Garrison named portable medical devices deployable in conflict situations, telemedicine, drone aircraft and a new generation of electronic health records as important to integrate. In one example of integration, Garrison pointed to drone delivery of automated external defibrillators for cardiac emergencies. Such an effort brings together multiple data sources and networks.
Essentially, the opportunities for fine-tuning medical care delivery open up because technologies like EHRs and remote sensing turn health care into an information technology.
“We have to evolve our military medicine, and how we’re doing that is digitizing everything so we’re able to increase operational efficiencies and bring the hospital to the patient at any time,” Garrison said.
From the patient standpoint, Garrison said, it’s important that organizations remain cognizant of the fact that patients vary widely in their readiness to deal with digital portals and other access means.
“We’ve just to make sure that the cultural shift changes at the speed of relevance for our patients,” she said.
Even so, patients from all generations will benefit from what digital transformation can bring. If nothing else, Garrison pointed out, military patients no longer have to carry their paper medical records from place to place. Instead, when they arrive for treatment or diagnoses, all of their relevant data will have been presented to the provider ahead of time.
When data from patients’ records are folded into integrated systems, “We’re able to bring in more digital healthcare information tools to the forefront,” she said, “and so we’re able to work with our providers and our patients to predict, ‘Hey, this is what’s going to occur. What are those trends, and how can we improve those patient outcomes?’”
Digitization also promises to boost efficiency of medical organizations with predictive analysis that helps clinicians head off costly medical situations.
Garrison the DoD’s and VA’s interoperable EHR helps, but it’s only one component of the medical digital transformation she and Maximus envision.
Easy way in
As operational medicine director for the Defense Health Agency, Garrison said, she worked on a project to establish a digital front door. She described this as “a solution to deliver comprehensive suite of digital capabilities, both emphasizing the patient and the provider experience.” The goal went beyond greater excellence and efficiency in healthcare delivery, by ultimately supporting improved military readiness.
The project was dubbed Area of Interest. Garrison said AOI “called for a lot of commercial solutions to address three primary lines of effort – patient experience, equipping producers with supportive technologies and enhancing data management capabilities.” She said that effort compliments Maximus’s capabilities “because of our focus on operational readiness, increased efficiency and evolution and modernization and technology.”
Data management underlies many of the modernization efforts, Garrison said. She said that during her DHA days, health authorities and contractors would stay up late at night trying to gather and coordinate information from 451 military treatment facilities.
“That’s when we decided to say, ‘how can we centralize this level of technology to where it’s integrated,’” available to health officials no less than to the Defense secretary or president. The pandemic accelerated this effort. Now, a modernized data platform provides two benefits. It lets decision makers work faster, and it makes data available for AI to augment their work.
About efforts beyond the MHS Genesis EHR: Garrison pointed to Maximus developing a solution that uses the EHR as a trusted data source to ensure patients and their providers have the information required ahead of a physical exam.
This would speed up things whether for exams within the government’s network or those occurring with external care providers, Garrison said. It will be available initially to the DHA, Garrison said, adding, “Our goal is to work alongside the VA.”
Garrison underscored the dual purpose of her team’s work, to improve service to service members and veterans seeking health care. It’s also aimed at improving military readiness and effectiveness in combat, an ongoing challenge.
Essentially, an integrated medical system will deliver information needed by anyone dealing with health and injury concerns in the conflict environment itself.
“It’s able to provide that predictive analytics and machine teaming that can help save patients’ lives,” Garrison said, adding, “It’s also going into the operational triage approach.” In that approach, physicians and others have the information to improve triage by work to not only help the most injured, but also those whose might have the most operational good.
She noted a January 27th White House executive order on driving military excellence and readiness at the forefront. “That’s what DHA is going to, and that’s what Maximus wants to be alongside to help,” Garrison said.
The interview was origionally shared by Federal News Network on March 13th, 2025. Click here to view the origional content.