THE HALO EFFECT
T
he Army’s Health Assessment Lite Operations (HALO) application was deployed to medical forces during the
COVID-19 pandemic. HALO is a digi- tized version of the Standard Form 600 used by DOD medical personnel to docu- ment patient treatment for wounded, injured or sick patients. Te software was developed by the Medical Commu- nications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) product management office, the Army acquisition program with primary responsibility for providing Army oper- ational health information technology for deployed medical forces. Te current version of HALO is designed primarily for documenting outpatient treatment at Role 1 battalion aid stations and Role 2 mili- tary treatment facilities.
After HALO was successfully launched on Nov. 15 at the U.S.-NATO hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, an updated version was ready for a planned Army rollout to deployed units worldwide. However, no one could have predicted using the appli- cation in response to the COVID-19 crisis a few months later.
In early March, the MC4 program started its COVID-19 efforts by providing equip- ment, training and technical support to dozens of Army medical units worldwide. At the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas, training and support was provided to medical staff of the 581st Medical Company Area Support, who were screening medi- cal patients at the hospital. Te program deployed field service representatives to the CenturyLink Field Event Center in Seat- tle, Washington and to the Javits Center in Manhattan, New York. Army medi- cal providers giving COVID-19 support in New York have documented over 600 patient encounters using HALO through April 15, with a number of additional sites planned.
In February 2020, in order to learn more about these recent developments and the next steps for HALO, I sat down with MC4 Product Director Tracy Ellis and MC4 Technical Management Division Chief Jay Patnaude, who oversees HALO’s development.
Paul Clark: Can you tell me about elec- tronic health records (EHRs) and why
In the first two days of use, three times as many electronic patient encounters were documented than in the two weeks leading up to the HALO go-live date with the legacy AHLTA-T.
—HALO deployment to Afghanistan on Nov. 15, 2019
they are important to operational medi- cal forces?
Tracy Ellis: Documenting health care for deployed service members is a critical part in continuity of care, patient safety and ensuring that proper medical care is provided when they leave the service.
Electronic documentation has many advantages over paper records. When there
CHECK THE RECORDS
MC4 field support representative Craig McDowell assists in setting up the Application Virtual Hosting Environment (AVHE) that allowed the 121st Field Hospital Isolation Center to remotely access hospital records during the COVID-19 response on March 24. (Photo by MC4)
64
Army AL&T Magazine
Summer 2020
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