Lockheed Martin, helping to further accelerate the advancement of digital health records and secure health information exchanges, has announced two new agreements to support the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). The contracts, which were awarded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), total $9 million over two years.

Under the first contract, Lockheed Martin will create new reference implementation software to support the development, testing and adoption of future Nationwide Health Information Network capabilities. The second contract calls for the development of real-world demonstrations and pilots for emergent NHIN capabilities.

“These pilots assess not only the technology and standards associated with the Nationwide Health Information Network, but also provide a test-bed to evaluate the interaction of all those elements required for secure interoperability among healthcare stakeholders,” said Michael Leff, director, Lockheed Martin Health Information Management Solutions. “This is the equivalent of taking a new medical therapy out of a controlled clinical trial and assessing the value of that therapy in a real-world setting.”

The Nationwide Health Information Network is the set of services, standards and policies that enable the secure exchange of health information over the Internet. This health IT initiative is considered a foundational element in realizing the Health Information Technology and Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009 (HITECH Act) goals of improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare for American citizens.

Lockheed Martin was among the first Nationwide Health Information Network contributors as a prime vendor in the Social Security Administration’s production prototype with Med Virginia, headquartered in Richmond, Va. In partnership with key stakeholders, Lockheed Martin helped develop technical specifications and provided health IT consultation for the implementation of the CONNECT gateway, an open source Federal Health Architecture initiative that offers core Nationwide Health Information Network interoperability standards. These standards are now the foundation for all future Nationwide Health Information Network expansion activity.

More recently, Lockheed Martin assisted the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on a project that demonstrated how the NHIN can support the secure exchange of standardized health assessments to help improve quality of care for Medicare patients as they transition among healthcare providers and professionals.