Plans in the Making for Peace Corps EHR

The Peace Corps plans to acquire a comprehensive electronic health records system to serve its volunteers stationed in 77 developing countries. The agency wants to develop a proof of concept electronic health record (EHR) and test it in a limited pilot by September and deploy it in fiscal 2013.

However, the Peace Corps faces challenges in establishing an EHR that can reach all its volunteer posts. Many of the developing regions where volunteers work, primarily in Africa and the Asia Pacific, have low bandwidth and big delays in processing network data because it is difficult to acquire affordable Internet connectivity, according to a recent request for information announcement in Federal Business Opportunities.
“An overall solution must work for all posts, not just the well-connected ones,” the agency said...