By Doug Beizer
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, August 28, 2006

BearingPoint Inc. has been selected by a federal office to provide program management support on a national health information network.

In 2004, the White House established the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as part of an effort toward building an electronic information system for health-care providers, payer organizations and government.

BearingPoint is to supply assistance in areas such as planning, contract management and portfolio management.

The contract is worth $3.4 million in its first year and includes three one-year options. It could be worth up to $13.7 million over four years.

As part of the project, BearingPoint, based in McLean, will help develop a communications portal and additional infrastructure to encourage knowledge sharing with industry and government.

"The primary task is the program management support services," said Rick Swanson, vice president of BearingPoint's federal health and human services account. "Also involved in that is the communications, and that is essentially standing up an environment where information that is created by Office of the National Coordinator and other groups is in an easily accessible area."

BearingPoint will assist the office -- which is in the Health and Human Services Department -- in moving the program from concept to reality, said Kelvin Womack, senior vice president of BearingPoint's public health and social services sector.

"They've got to demonstrate and prototype some examples of a national health information network to prove that we truly can make electronic health information flow across the nation from various provider organizations, payer organizations and government," Womack said.

Several systems integrators are developing prototypes of the network, Womack said.

The Office of the National Coordinator also has to establish standards for information sharing to be used across the infrastructure once it is built.

"We have to make sure all the various health-care entities can share this information in a seamless and standard way," Womack said. "So there have to be standards that guide all the vendors that will be creating products and services for this."

BearingPoint has worked with the Health and Human Services Department for 12 years, and with the secretary's office -- where this program resides -- for more than five years.

BearingPoint's earlier work for the department, which is ongoing, focuses mostly on helping install the department's new financial system.

Doug Beizer is a staff writer with Washington Technology. For news on this and other contracts, go tohttp://www.washingtontechnology.com.