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Leidos and Aspen Medical have announced a teaming partnership to modernise and integrate digital technology into medical services for the Australian Defence Force.
Under the teaming agreement, Aspen and Leidos will bid for the Australian Defence Contracted Health System program and attempt a major reinvigoration of how healthcare supports the readiness of Australia’s Defence Force.
The Department of Defence has previously requested information, published by AusTender earlier this year, for an industry partner to deliver comprehensive health services as well as a “contemporary, efficient, effective and flexible approach for the delivery of health services to the ADF, and meet the anticipated growth in the ADF workforce”.
“Our mission is to deliver more than healthcare. Our goal is to build a nationwide, technology-enabled system that keeps Defence’s most important capability, its people, mission-ready at all times,” Leidos Australia chief executive officer Paul Chase said.
“We’ve formed a team with Aspen Medical to provide an outcomes-focused solution to the ADF’s need to ensure a capability that’s fit for the future force and provides an operational capability.
“In Defence, the priority is around force readiness. So there is occupational health in the traditional sense, but that added layer of force readiness. The tender is quite clear that one of the prime objectives is force readiness, to have the force ready, fit to work and to deploy.
“(The partnership will) combine technology, service provision through telehealth, occupational health, medicine, all to reduce the time and also to ensure that service personnel are fit for deployment.”
The partnership is envisioned to deliver integrated, mission-focused care model, that includes primary and specialist medical services, mental health support and occupational rehabilitation for ADF personnel.
Aspen Medical is expected to provide support as a health service delivery partner, supplementing and expanding Leidos’ existing wealth of Defence knowledge, strength and experience in successful program delivery to the ADF.
“Aspen Medical has been a trusted provider of contracted health services to the ADF and defence forces around the world for more than two decades. We’re incredibly pleased to be partnering with Leidos Australia to bid for this essential Defence service contract,” Aspen Medical group CEO Craig Fitzgerald said.
“We’ve spoken a fair bit in the past (with Leidos) and looked at opportunities, and this is a long-term opportunity for a comprehensive partnership.
“One of the key pillars of the tender is the healthcare must be sustainable, equitable, which is a big thing. Service personnel must have access to healthcare wherever they are posted and it must be scalable and it must understand our strategic environment.
“The ADF is always looking to be more operational, they need a higher level of fitness from their employees and they have a longer-term care responsibility that the general public wouldn’t receive from the one place … Our focus will be to make sure that we meet all those different needs.
“Aspects of military service, (such as) the remoteness, the deployability, the fitness testing aspects … These things evolve continually and the ADF focus with this tender is looking to the future of how it can be better for those members and we’re going to try and live up to that ... It starts with health service delivery, overlayed with integration technology to give the ADF a system that will truly be valuable to them and that they’ve not seen before.”
The partnership is expected combine Leidos’ global expertise in health, logistics and systems integration with Aspen Medical’s deep clinical capability and nationwide delivery network to deliver an integrated model to make health a core component of Defence capability.
Leidos’ account director for health, James Evans, said one of the key priorities will be delivering successful benefit back to the Australian Defence Force.
“From my perspective, it’s about delivering back to the ADF. As an ex-serviceman, I understand the pressures and the requirements for people to be fit for duty but also to receive the medical care that they deserve,” he said.
“It’s about how do we bring that to life? And how are we flexible enough and agile enough to make sure that wherever you’re posted, whatever the need, we actually can meet that capability?
“How can we increase the agility and the flexibility, introduce some of the new technologies and make sure we deliver the basic services really well, hence why we’ve teamed with Aspen. (It’s important) to deliver service in the remote and regional locations and use technology to make that easier.
“As part of digital health, some of the clinical decision support, some of the telehealth capabilities, are things that we want to build out and expand on … We’re bringing a specific defence healthcare experience and system integration approach.
“We’ve been providing this service directly to the ADF and tailoring the solution. We team with Aspen as the best of the delivery of their partner.
“I think the main thing is the move towards virtual. We all know there’s a shortage of workforce and the health workforce in general is going to be getting shorter and shorter over time. (In addition) People are becoming more technically literate and they want more immediate access to information … Part of it is around the data and making sure that you can share the load and predict the load.”
