Advisors to the Brazilian Armed Forces Healthcare
CLIENT
Brazilian Army Healthcare System
Brasilia, Brazil
SERVICES
IT Strategic Planning
OUR ROLE
Strategic Advisors
The Brazilian Army healthcare system (Diretoria de Saúde, Exercito do Brasil) has 17 acute care hospitals across the country and 82 clinics. These entities had 7 different medical record systems and no information integration across the locations. The government decided to standardize clinical information systems across all sites with one healthcare record for each soldier and their dependent family members.
the challenge
With minimal IT investment over the past decade, the major challenges for the Healthcare Directorate (Diretoria de Saúde – DSau) included:
- None of the EMR systems utilized at the hospitals were capable of supporting a multi-site healthcare system
- Clinical protocols were not being shared or standardized across the country
- DSau did not have the budget for a best-in-class integrated EHR system
- The military leadership wanted to develop the EHR in-house to control specifications and the technical build
the solution
We conducted technology visioning and planning sessions with DSau leadership to:
- Identify opportunities and risks in the development of a new EHR system
- Provided options and considerations in the EHR decision process
- Informed DSau that internal development of a proprietary EHR is the highest risk and very likely the highest cost option
- Recommended that DSau select an EHR vendor that has a minimum of 80% required functionality and has the ability to customize to military healthcare requirements
the results
The major achievements for these advisory services included:
- Raised level of awareness of IT best practices and requirements with leadership of the Brazilian Army healthcare system
- Provision of sound recommendations for an EHR selection based on best practices and what is being experienced by military healthcare organizations in other countries (e.g. Cerner & U.S. DoD)