A consortium led by systems integrator Leidos has secured a $329.65 million contract to roll out a comprehensive new digital health capability for the Australian Defence Force by July 2028.

Leidos and Australian companies MediRecords, Coviu and Nous Group joined in the consortium bid to ​​deliver the ambitious technologies, including an EMR, telehealth, ePrescribing, practice management, eReferrals, clinical decision support, artificial intelligence and data analytics.

The platform will work across primary, occupational, emergency and hospital care, and integrate with the ADF's IT infrastructure and My Health Record.

ADF expects it to reach at least Stage 5 on the HIMSS Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model.

The Defence JP2060 Phase 4 project will see the Health Knowledge Management (HKM) solution replace the existing Defence eHealth System (DeHS), which is based on the UK's EMIS clinical software delivered in 2014 for $133 million. That rollout went $110 million over its initial budget, with the cost blow out blamed on inadequate planning, budgeting and risk management, according to the Australian National Audit Office.

The new HKM solution will cover the ADF’s deployed and non-deployed environments, including garrison sites and operations on land, air and at sea. The current system reaches about 2000 clinicians and 80,000 patients.

Telehealth provider Coviu and cloud-based clinical and practice management software provider MediRecords have been joined on the project by Australian health technology company Alcidion, which will implement its Miya Precision system.

In an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Alcidion said its contract with Leidos amounts to $23.3 million over an initial six year period to "perform the critical role of aggregating data from consortium partner solutions, and other systems in the Defence environment, to provide a single, consolidated, longitudinal view of every participant's health status and history, accessible via the platform's intuitive modern interface."

The change management effort supporting the substantial project will be provided by Nous.

More than 95 per cent of the project will be delivered by Australian companies.

Leidos is currently leading a partnership consisting of four core companies – Cerner Corporation, Accenture and Henry Schein One – delivering the US Department of Defense's new electronic health record, MHS GENESIS, billed as the most lucrative electronic health record contract in history. At 50 per cent deployed, it is operational at 1360 locations, reaching more than 92,000 clinicians and providers. Once fully implemented, it will provide health records for almost 10 million service personnel and their families.