Cerner said it will demonstrate new elements of its electronic health record work for the U.S. Department of Defense at HIMSS16 for interoperability, first response and population health.

The EHR maker, in fact, will be running a demo called “Meet Sargent Garcia,” to showcase elements of the DOD EHR work “in a number of key areas, including user experience, interoperability and advanced capabilities for the government,” according to Travis Dalton, vice president of the investor-owned and federal business at Cerner.

[Also: Cerner wins $50.7 million DoD data hosting contract]

“There are a lot of commonalities in healthcare whether it is military or commercial, but there are some things that are unique to the DoD,” he said.

Cerner is in the first phase of the historic $4.3 billion Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization project – testing the technology to pass military muster – and along with partners Accenture and Leidos expects to have the first military facilities (near Seattle) up and running with the EHR late this year.

In the military healthcare environment, for example, there are theater, ship, submarine and battlefield settings of care. To that end Cerner plans to demonstrate the first responder application with mobile battlefield capabilities.

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“This will allow military clinicians to operate in an austere environment, capturing data at the point of contact and syncing it to become part of the longitudinal health record,” Dalton said. “And this first responder application can be applicable to the commercial side of healthcare in such settings as emergency care and home health.”

Cerner also will be showcasing a capability it calls theater sync, the ability to synchronize EHR data from a disconnected environment to a connected environment.

“That can be applicable in a submarine, where you can later sync the data so it becomes part of the longitudinal record over time,” Dalton said.

Cerner sees the military EHR leading to enormous benefits in the arena of population health management.

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“From Cerner’s perspective, there are three main elements on the population health journey,” Dalton said. “First we need to know a population, so digitizing the longitudinal record is the first step toward the other, broader goals. From there we will engage the patients through techniques like patient portals in ways they have not been engaged before, and then further on we can move into managing the population with things like advanced analytics to manage outcomes.”

Cerner also will be showcasing its work with partner Henry Schein Dentrix to integrate dental data into the EHR, technology that is also applicable to other public sectors, Dalton said, such as the penal system. 

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This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.