DHITS 2026: What DHA Told Industry About the Path Ahead

At DHITS 2026 in New Orleans, Defense Health Agency leadership laid out where military health IT is headed and what it will take to get there. The message was consistent from session to session. Readiness depends on getting data, referrals, and AI tools to move as one governed system, not as another point solution stacked on top of what already exists.

A Data Advantage DHA Has Not Fully Used

DHA holds longitudinal data on roughly 9.5 million beneficiaries, spanning Service members, dependents, and retirees. Leadership was candid that this data remains largely siloed and underused as a readiness advantage.

The gap shows up at the point of care. Force health status, blood supply, and casualty flow still live on separate screens. Service health IT leaders described real gaps at the tactical edge that are often bridged manually in spreadsheets rather than by connected systems.

Building the Digital Spine

DHA’s network and cybersecurity leadership called for a “digital spine” to connect tactical networks, medical enterprise gateways, and core systems like MHS GENESIS. That build-out pairs with a shift from perimeter-only defense to Zero Trust across the enterprise, a response to how much the threat landscape has changed as more AI tools and data move through DHA’s networks.

Governing Dashboards and AI at Scale

DHA’s analytics environment has grown faster than its governance model. More than 10,000 Power BI workspaces and more than 1,000 Tableau workbooks are active across the enterprise, each built independently and often defining core metrics differently. DHA’s response is to stop trying to govern thousands of dashboards and instead govern the underlying, certified Data Products that feed them.

AI adoption is scaling just as fast. Ambient clinical documentation is rolling out to more than 40,000 providers DHA-wide, and DHA has identified more than 400 active AI projects, its largest inventory to date. Governance has not kept pace: only about 2 percent of those projects currently have complete model cards and documented data lineage. Closing that gap is a near-term priority.

Proof the Approach Works: Cutting Review Time by 90 Percent

The AI-first push already has a concrete result behind it. The Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) built an NLP and machine-learning platform to help reviewers at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) manage the volume of medical history that came with joint health information exchange access. Before the tool existed, reviewers opened each record individually, and the resulting backlog was large enough that services began missing recruiting mission targets.

The platform applies natural language processing across roughly 16 standard medical vocabularies, extracting an estimated 1.4 million distinct clinical concepts from federal EHRs, legacy DoD systems, and the joint health information exchange. It does not diagnose or make qualification decisions. It surfaces and organizes the relevant information so a MEPS clinician can decide faster, and it is tuned to over-flag rather than under-flag when a record is ambiguous.

The results over roughly three and a half years: Monthly pre-screen submissions nearly doubled, from about 20,000 to 30,000 a month, while the time from submission to authorization dropped by roughly 90 percent. It is a clear example of what DHA’s AI-first mandate looks like once it is fully deployed and governed.

Funding the Shift

DHA’s FY27 request of $40.9 billion in Operations and Maintenance funds digital health as an operational capability, not an IT line item. Leadership’s ask to industry was direct: Bring solutions to named mission problems, not technology looking for a requirement. Deeper industry partnership does not reduce the Government’s responsibility to be a disciplined customer. DHA says it increases it, with the problem defined, architecture and interoperability planned, and cybersecurity and data standards set before a solution is bought.

Where eVisit Fits

A common thread ran through DHITS 2026. DHA wants data, referrals, and administrative workflows to move as one governed, secure system, connected by a digital spine and protected by Zero Trust. That is the gap eVisit’s platform is built to close.

eVisit provides an orchestration enterprise platform that brings referral management, care coordination, and virtual care delivery together under a single, secure system, aligned to DHA’s data governance requirements and supporting the medically ready force / ready medical force mission.

If you were not able to connect with eVisit on-site in New Orleans, we would welcome a conversation about how this maps to your program’s priorities.

Reach out to our federal team.