Cloud-Based Electronic Health Record Applications are Essential to Expeditionary Patient Care

The Air Force often uses paper to document expeditionary medical records because its IT systems are not properly integrated. To solve this, the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) and DoD must successfully migrate to a joint cloud based electronic health record (EHR) system. It must be centralized, always up, and easily accessed through a tablet or a smartphone. 83% of healthcare organizations are using cloud based applications today. The AFMS and DoD healthcare will not remain a high reliability organization unless cloud migration is successful. A successful cloud migration will enable all treatment to be electronically documented jointly and available across multiple echelons in the expeditionary continuum of care. If successful, the DoD will deliver the world’s first globally integrated cloud based expeditionary healthcare system. Qualitative and quantitative analysis in this research concludes that cloud migrations must properly address IT security and cloud privacy concerns. The DoD must reach out to software vendors to help them integrate security standards cheaply during product design. Success here will allow the use of innovative application development platforms such as Amazon Cloud as well as Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software and telehealth applications.