PwC Joins Crowded Field Going After U.S. Military EHR Contract

PricewaterhouseCoopers is the latest company to announce its intent to compete for a highly coveted contract to replace the Defense Department's electronic health-record system.  The professional services firm said Friday that it plans to team up with EHR vendors DSS and MedSphere, and systems integrator General Dynamics Information Technology, to offer an EHR that would combine software from the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance with applications from PwC's commercial partners.

That “open architecture” based EHR would serve as a replacement for the Military Health System's current EHR which uses multiple clinical information systems to serve more than 9.7 million beneficiaries, 56 hospitals and approximately 360 clinics.  If awarded what's known as the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization project, PwC would be taking on a 10-year contract estimated to be worth $11 billion. But it will have to beat out several major EHR developers who have already announced their intent to seek the contract earlier this summer.

Cerner Corp. announced in late June that it would be teaming up with defense computing contractor Leidos and systems integrator and consultant Accenture Federal Services to make a bid for the contract. Several days before that, Allscripts, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Computer Sciences Corp. also announced they would be pursuing the contract together...