Hitachi America announced it has been awarded a contract by the New England Partners (NEP) to implement a comprehensive pilot program employing smart card solutions for 8 automated government programs.
New England Partners is a consortium of the six New England states – Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont – in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Nutrition Services (FNS), which plans to improve and streamline the delivery of a variety of healthcare programs for economically disadvantaged families. The NEP will harness the power of the smart card technology to bridge government and private system programs and increase the efficiency of the reporting and reimbursement processes.
The New England Partners Project is financed under an Agreement with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Community and Public Health, with funds provided in part or in whole by the State of New Hampshire and/or the United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service.
Each state has designed one county to participate in the 21-month NEP Pilot. Participants in the six counties will be provided smart cards with their benefits and personal data contained on the cards. Participants will be able to purchase groceries, coordinate health appointments, and track their healthcare progress with their NEP smart cards. Following a successful pilot, each state will determine whether it will implement the program statewide. This pilot will include approximately 625 POS terminals at 90 retailer sites and more than 20 provider sites, as well as 10,000 WIC participants.
The NEP Pilot plans to provide a proof of concept for reorienting government services toward a ‘participant centered’ focus, rendering better coordination and efficiencies in overlapping caseloads and care management. The shared patient records maintained on the microprocessor chip will enable improved case management, and will eliminate redundant activities, services and data collection, and will improve the quality of participating services.
Hitachi will provide the microprocessor chips, the MULTOS operating system, program management, project management, the host hardware and software solution, system documentation and testing. Participating with Hitachi America are its bid partners:
- Lake Mary, Florida-based Dreifus Associates Ltd., Inc., who will provide
training, user documentation, and ongoing operational support (including user
surveys, and equipment deployment and retrieval);
- Dulles, Virginia-based Giesecke & Devrient who will produce the smart
cards and provide the pre-personalization services;
- Chantilly, Virginia-based CardSystems Solutions Inc. who will provide the
NEP host operational support, Merchant and Cardholder Help Desks, and Internet-based
reporting support; and
- Wakefield, Massachusetts-based Wear Logic who will provide the point-of-sale
(POS) terminal hardware and the POS application software
