New Navy Platform Aims to Improve Medical Recordkeeping at Sea

The U.S. Navy is testing an electronic medical records system designed to support service members at sea and in remote environments. The platform can share data with U.S.-based medical facilities while also operating independently when connectivity is unavailable.

The Joint Operational Medicine Information Systems (JOMIS) Program Management Office within the Defense Health Agency developed the Operational Medical Care Delivery Platform (OPMed CDP) to ensure deployed sailors have comprehensive medical records even in austere environments.

The system captures any medical care provided to service members, and that record follows them when they return from deployment or transition to stateside treatment facilities, explained Cdr. Jacob Cole, director of health informatics program lead at the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

“That makes sure that if they receive care, all that care is well documented. And eventually when they leave the military, any injuries are appropriately documented,” Cole told GovCIO Media and Research.

Managing Distance and Isolation

Logistics remains a major challenge when collecting health care data in operational environments. Cole said moving a patient or their records between ships, islands and mainland facilities is far more complex than within traditional medical systems.

“Accurate medical documentation enables both those things to happen effectively,” Cole said.

Connectivity also presents challenges for at-sea medical records systems. Under operational conditions, ships may have limited bandwidth or no ability to transmit data. OPMed CDP is designed to function independently when vessels are disconnected from Navy medical networks.

Successful Pilots

Navy Medicine conducted its first pilot of the system aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney from Dec. 1 to Dec. 12, 2025. It was the first use of live patient data aboard a ship.

Cole noted that destroyers and other smaller warships typically have small medical teams led by an independent duty corpsman — the Navy’s equivalent of a medic and similar in capability to a physician assistant. These teams primarily provide routine outpatient care, making the environment a suitable initial test case.

The pilot was supported by collaboration between the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Naval Information Warfare Command, which provided access to shipboard IT systems, and U.S. Fleet Forces Command, which provided the vessel.

“It was a very large endeavor to bring this new system on, assess it and make sure that it was an effective tool,” Cole explained.

JOMIS is using an agile software development methodology to refine the OPMed CDP between pilots. The system is designed to be iterated and improved as testing continues. As part of the pilot, teams evaluated areas for improvement while determining whether the platform can safely and securely support patient care.

One capability not demonstrated in the Carney pilot was the system’s ability to connect and interface directly with military medical treatment facilities in the U.S.

Additional pilots highlighted the system’s ability to pull patient data and populate records. As a result, sailors visiting sick call aboard the Carney did not need to complete extensive intake forms. Pre-populating patient information allows clinicians to spend more time on care, such as conducting physical exams, Cole said.

Next Steps

The program just completed a second pilot program aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, which has larger, more dedicated and specialized medical facilities and staff. This pilot involved going through patient handling workflows, incorporating live patient data, ingesting data from U.S.-based medical networks and pulling that data into the shipboard system.

“We demonstrated a data seating capability and then we also showed full data transfer back into the stateside record as well,” Cole said.

There are now plans for another pilot aboard another Kearsarge within the next few months. The goal is to continue to fine tuning the system and work out any remaining issues. This will be the final pilot before JOMIS makes the decision to fully implement the system across the fleet, he said.