VA taps little known small business to spearhead next-generation electronic health record

The Veterans Affairs Department on Monday announced it had awarded a $5 million contract to the Informatics Applications Group, a small technology services company based in Reston, Va., to spearhead its next-generation electronic health record open source software.

Two well-informed sources speculated that the little known company won this key contract because of its status as a small, woman-owned business. These sources added the company will have to hire subcontractors to perform the work.

In April, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker described the open source modernization of the current Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture system as the "best approach for VA, veterans and taxpayers."

In May, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki signed an agreement pledging to jointly develop an electronic health record for the two departments. The agreement endorsed VA's open source software plan.

The contract calls for the Informatics Applications Group to act as a custodial agent for the open source software project and to establish and manage a code repository that will be used to update VistA and provide software to the entire national health care community.

The performance work statement for the open source contract defines a major role for the custodial agent in management of the key VA health information technology contract for the next decade. "A well-constructed open source model provides the structure for the distribution of code, the management of the architecture and product roadmaps, and protection of intellectual property. It creates an environment in which innovators are comfortable contributing to the product and users are comfortable relying on the product to run their businesses," VA said.

As the custodial agent, the Informatics Applications Group would act as the gatekeeper for this process and "essentially define the relationship between and interactions among developers, users, vendors and service providers."

This is a tall order for a small company now thrust into the limelight, said someone familiar with the VA open source project. Aside from information provided on its website, there is little public information about Dalita Harmon, the company's president and chief executive officer.

Harmon's biography on the website says she was founder and CEO of a leading business development and marketing firm in Washington and "was well-known for her vision guiding the turnaround of established technology giants and launching new technology ventures." The bio does not name the marketing firm or any of the established technology giants or new ventures Harmon is credited with turning around.

According to the bio, before she started the Informatics Applications Group, Harmon "was responsible for the successful launch and branding of Web-based technologies and consumer-oriented dotcom ventures." The bio added, "Her expertise has been leveraged by startup and Fortune 100 corporations on launching new technologies including Smart Card, RFID, Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), Web-based health information technology and medical imaging, as well as Web-based business to business and consumer dotcoms."

Harmon didn't respond to an email query about the specifics of her background. Fred Goeringer, co-founder and managing principal of the Informatics Applications Group, in an email reply said the company will not conduct an interview or provide any information "pending a discussion with the VA contracting officer and staff principals as to what guidelines they would like us to follow on releasing public information about our work in their behalf." In a follow-up email, Goeringer said this applied to queries about Harmon's background and the companies she worked for.

Goeringer, a retired Army Medical Service Corps colonel, has extensive experience in military health IT and was the founder and first commander of the Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center in 1998. He was a telemedicine pioneer and helped manage installation of a medical Internet in 1996 for U.S. personnel serving in Bosnia.