Case Study: Building a Secure Portal for Managing Navy Medical Information
Customer Challenge
The Navy needed to improve accessibility to clinical and business data through streamlining the complexity of multiple user interfaces, business processes, and content management. They also aimed to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) through re-utilization of programming code and the consolidation of current “stovepipe” web applications.
Delivery
ATSC implemented the Naval Medical Online (NMO) portal for the Naval Medical Information Management Center (NMIMC) Navy Bureau of Medicine (BUMED) to act as a single point of online access to more than 15 services including Navy medical data, news, training, distance learning, legal data, and a thesaurus-type web application. NMO is a secure web-based portal application that hosts a collection of clinical and business transactions integrated into a single, personalized, and needs-based user interface. Key features include:
- Multi-national access – provides access to users from around the world including those aboard U.S. vessels at sea
- Multiple-role-based security – uses 128-bit encryption to ensure patient privacy and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
- Spiral development methodology – allows new features to be put into production very quickly because of the shortened development time.
We are also responsible for business requirements, system design, service development and maintenance, quality control, deployment, customer support, configuration management and network optimization and management for NMO at NMIMC. Furthermore, ATSC has developed applications and services in support of NMO’s implementation of public health policy. Highlights include:
- Individual Medical Readiness – uses web services to provide Navy personnel readiness status.
- Infrastructure Data Repository – statistics from this secure portal-based data repository facilitate detailed analyses of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Asset Management (AM) costs, and Configuration Management (CM) costs.
- File Cabinet – provides document sharing tool for authorized users.
- In Session – offers web-based training via a learning management system for Navy medical personnel, and tracks coursework and test scores, issues certificates, and collects feedback.
Results
- Cut costs totaling over $10 million by streamlining legacy and stovepipe applications into this single secure web-based portal.
- Shortened delivery time of new modules by months through an open framework wherein information systems, web applications and data were plugged in and made operational rapidly.
- Improved communication flow for Navy personnel with a single consolidated place for all of their medical needs.