Digital Archive and Access to Lifetime Military Medical Records

In current military medical records manage system, upon entry of US military on to active duty, new recruits have created for them, individual paper military medical records. These records accompany the military members and are normally stored at supporting military health system clinics or hospitals wherever they are stationed throughout their military careers. Upon retirement or separation, the record is turned in to military personnel managers at the installation where the member separates and is sent to a central military records archive facility. Subsequent access to the records can only accomplished via a difficult process. Ontar Corporation proposes a digital archiving system for archiving the contents of the active military medical records file upon retirement or separation of the military member, prior to permanently filing the medical records so that these records and the medical histories they contain can be securely accessed, searched and data mined via the TRICARE Web portal by authorized user. The proposed system will use advanced digital mark and character recognition technology combined with smart indexing and tagging of critical medical data strategy. The system will include a user friendly document management tool to improve the experience of the archiving process. The system will provide standard Web Service interface to allow applications on heterogeneous system, from difference location retrieving the medical record instantly as needed through secured internet communication. At the conclusion of Phase I we will deliver to OSD a prototype system that demonstrates the feasibility of archiving paper records and retrieving and data mining digitized records. In phase II, we will develop a fully functional digital archive system for archiving and accessing lifetime military medical records. We will also look into the automating solution to migrate military medical records from the legacy CHCS I system to the digital archive repository.