Supporting Defense Health Agency (DHA)’s Solution Delivery Division

Maximus advances deployment preparedness for servicewomen with DRES

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The Defense Health Agency’s (DHA) global workforce of almost 140,000 civilians and military personnel is committed to medical excellence, health care improvement and ensuring military personnel are ready to perform combat operations and humanitarian missions at home and abroad. Using the principles of Ready Reliable Care, DHA’s approach to advance highly reliable practices across the Military Health System, the agency works across clinical and non-clinical settings to drive better outcomes for patients, staff, and the enterprise during both peacetime and wartime. The Solutions Delivery Division at the DHA enhances the health service delivery through its exceptional information and technology capabilities.

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Services provided

  • Accelerated  time-to-value delivery through better governance.
  • Developed long-term portfolio roadmap facilitating retirement of applications/ components for additional savings.
  • Streamlined architectures resulting in efficiencies, reduced sustainment and O&M costs.
  • Provided application analytics with real-time usage reports

Success achieved

  • 6,000+ page views in the first six months since its launch
  • Second most viewed application on the DHA mobile site
  • 75,000 actively deployed servicewomen supported in 2020
  • Significantly reduced number of lost duty days

Accelerating digital transformation to provide key health information for servicewomen

Challenge

Deployment Readiness Education for Servicewomen (DRES) provides health information before, during and after a deployment on topics including pre-deployment packing lists, mental health management, and health care communications guidance to ensure the service members are military and family ready to serve. While DHA’s mission is to maximize the health of service members and ensure they can successfully navigate military life, the complex military health information was scattered, difficult to find, incomplete and lacking in clear organization. This barrier to key health information for servicewomen was resulting in a reduced readiness and lost duty days.

Approach

Recognizing our capabilities in accelerating digital transformation, modernizing IT systems and applying a foundation rooted in our deep knowledge of agency missions and operations, the Web and Mobile Technology (WMT) Program Management Office partnered with Maximus to design and develop the Deployment Readiness Education for Servicewomen (DRES) web application. This interactive, progressive web application (PWA) provides an installable version of the handbook with an extensive amount of easy to access, valuable information for servicewomen during their deployment even in areas of low or no connectivity.

Having an established track record of performance and trust with the WMT, our Maximus team was able to provide the following:

  • A dedicated team including servicewomen, already in place, excited to contribute to the project
  • A holistic, agile application development and governance process - from CI/CD to project management, to quality assurance testing
  • Incorporation of an end-to-end view of the end user that addressed the full scope of the mission challenge
  • A combined understanding of our customers and comprehensive knowledge of emerging technologies

Results

Readiness is one of the top priorities for the military and critical for the security of our nation. By addressing how service women were prepared for deployment with accessible health information, Maximus’s support of the DRES PWA development advances the military’s readiness across all branches.

Since its launch in early February, DRES is making it simpler for servicewomen to obtain the information required to be deployment ready. Making certain this information is delivered in an easy to carry and view format while adhering to all security and privacy requirements, DRES ensures the U.S. has a ready medical force and a medically ready force well equipped to protect their teams, their squad and our nation.