OREANDA-NEWS.  General Dynamics Information Technology, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), has been awarded a task order by the U.S. Army Contracting Command-Rock Island to develop, implement and maintain the Armed Forces Billing and Collection Utilization Solution (ABACUS). The new system will enable the U.S. Army Medical Command, U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery and U.S. Air Force Medical Service to better identify, process and collect other health insurance. This task order has a value of USD 63 million over five years, if all options are exercised.

Under this contract, General Dynamics will provide software-as-a-service using a cloud hosting solution to generate medical claims, pharmacy claims, invoices and governmental billing forms – automating, consolidating and centralizing the tasks of three disparate systems and replacing legacy systems. The company will deploy ABACUS into 136 military medical treatment facilities around the globe. Work will be performed primarily in Herndon, Va., with implementation support at customer locations worldwide.

“General Dynamics has provided billing and claims management and analytics expertise to the government and military health community for more than 30 years,” said Marcus Collier, senior vice president of General Dynamics Information Technology’s Health and Civilian Solutions division. “We are proud to support the U.S. Army Medical Command as it leverages cloud computing to modernize its collections systems and facilitate better quality health care and improved outcomes for service members.”

This task order is the first task order issued under the U.S. Army, Area Processing Centers, Army Private Cloud (APC2) indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. APC2 is a component of the LandWarNet strategic initiative, which encompasses all Army information capabilities such as collecting, processing and storing information for warfighters. Through this program, the Army plans to lower application migration, hosting, administration and maintenance costs by moving to cloud computing and reducing the number of data centers it operates. 

General Dynamics delivers a wide range of health IT support to the military health system community, including designing, building and operating the Single Sign-On and Context Management solution for the Defense Health System Services. The company is a leader in providing cloud computing and security solutions to government customers, ranging from cloud brokerage to managed services, including supporting the U.S. Department of Defense Enterprise Email Program that will provide email for 4.5 million users worldwide by 2016.