Apptis to bolster DOD world health care system

Apptis Inc. will provide information technology support to the Defense Department's worldwide health system under a $4 million contract.

The Defense Health Systems Support award calls for Apptis to provide operational and maintenance services and support for the worldwide deployment of the Military Health System's Enterprise Blade Server.

EBS is a complex system that contains several components requiring around the clock monitoring in its operations center, company officials said. High availability and more than 99 percent uptime are vital because EBS houses critical medical applications for the Military Health System, they added.

Under the agreement, Apptis will provide centralized administration support through remote management and monitoring of the EBS sites at military treatment facilities worldwide. Apptis currently supports more than 75 such sites and expects an additional 26 sites to be brought online next year.

In addition to providing project oversight and monitoring of EBS, Apptis will perform troubleshooting and problem-resolution tasks.

As the incumbent on the initial contract signed in September 2005 and the EBS deployment contractor, Apptis designed and created the MHS Blade Operating Center. The contractor will continue to maintain the infrastructure and all hosted applications.

The contract work will not just prevent outages for the system, it will ensure that the tools and applications required for uninterrupted health care are available to military health professionals, said Tom Pike, group vice president for healthcare systems and engineering at Apptis.

Apptis, of Chantilly, Va., ranks No. 47 on Washington Technology's 2008 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.