Lockheed Martin to Broaden Use of NHIN

Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin will take steps to accelerate the advancement of digital health records and secure health information exchanges with two new agreements to support the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). The contracts, which were awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services' 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 NHIN capabilities. The second contract calls for the development of real-world demonstrations and pilots for emergent Nationwide Health Information Network capabilities.

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 NHIN 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.