Defence Medical Services (DMS) is a single point for primary, intermediate and secondary health care, dental care, and occupational health/public health support. DMS takes care of about 200,000 service personnel and 50,000 civilians in the UK and abroad. It does this from around 500 medical centres, dental clinics and facilities on ships.

What DMS needed

It was all about improving the care and treatment of military personnel. DMS just had to change the way records were stored – on non-networked computers or on paper. Some service personnel even had more than one record as they moved between different locations during their career. To simplify and improve the way things were they needed one central database. It would give doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other health professionals access to the most up-to-date information on their patients - anywhere, anytime.

In April 2006, DMS chose Logica to help them with this. For the next ten years Logica would work with DMS to provide the Defence Medical Information Capability Programme (DMICP).

The Challenge

In the military, people move around and move home every two to three years. It was essential to have a system that could gather, store, retrieve and analyze medical records and information. And then share this among themselves, with other MOD departments and with the NHS.

Our Answer

The close partnership between DMS and Logica brought together a powerful combination of skills from within the public and private sectors. This was key to the programme’s delivery on time and to budget.

Now DMS can:

• access and cross reference military personnel’s health records at the click of a button - from field hospitals, ships, even from battlefields
• give soldiers and civilians speedy diagnosis and treatment, spend more of their time caring for patients and use medical resources better.
• restrict iHR access to authorized people
• open and save data easily on the new user-friendly Windows based system (the old one worked on DOS)
• reduce record duplication, store corruption free data and better meet government health directives
• allow senior staff to keep up to date with reporting.

Once in place in UK army sites, the system was extended to Air Force, Navy and permanent overseas bases by 2008. And in the future it will be linked to the NHS electronic patient record scheme.

Why work with Logica?

We are highly rated by the MOD’s supplier relations group. It’s no wonder. We understand defence issues. No matter how complex the system or services, you can rely on us to deliver. Our deep experience of health systems has helped clients like NHS and UCLH. We also have a big part to play in the Paradigm Secure Communications led Skynet 5 team and the ATLAS consortium delivering DII(F).