Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application The Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application ( AHLTA ) is the electronic medical record ( EMR ) system used by medical providers of the U . S . Department of Defense ( DoD ) since its initial implementation in January 2004 . It is a services - wide medical and dental information management system . ( According to the DoD , “ AHLTA ” is no longer considered an acronym , but is rather the system ’ s only name . ) AHLTA is a " next generation " system following the Composite Health Care System ( CHCS ) , upon which it builds . It is a clinical documentation engine for the military physician s who write progress notes , put in orders , document procedures performed , and it provides the basis of the medical coding of information into an Oracle database . Additionally , it provides secure online access to all Military Health System ( MHS ) beneficiaries records for nurses , corpsmen , medics , technicians , clerks and various office managers . The system links the U . S . military ’ s 481 medical treatment facilities ( MTFs ) , including those deployed abroad , to the EMR , ultimately supporting 9 . 2 million MHS beneficiaries . It is the first system to allow for the central storage of standardized EHR data that is available for worldwide sharing of patient information . History . The development of AHLTA is directly related to a Presidential Directive issued in 1997 . The Directive focused on and reinforced the need for a centralized , longitudinal patient record for military personnel accessible across the DoD enterprise . AHLTA , previously known as the Composite Health Care System II , was developed by the Clinical Information Technology Program Office ( CITPO ) , an acquisitions office for centrally managed MHS clinical information technology systems supporting the U . S . military . ( In 2008 , CITPO was combined with the TMIP - J Program Office to form the Defense Health Information Management System , or DHIMS . ) It began worldwide deployment in January 2004 . Unique to AHLTA was the entry of more than 2 years of historical health information for each beneficiary upon the creation of their EHR . This information , transferred from legacy systems , facilitated continuity of care . AHLTA has been deployed in Phases , or " Blocks " , of increasing functionality that allows the MHS to build a system that is easily adapted to meet evolving requirements and to incorporate the latest available technology . Block 1 provided the foundation of system : performance through a graphical user interface for real - time ambulatory encounter documentation . It enabled retrieval of a beneficiary ' s health record at the point of care . By December 2006 , Block 1 had been fully deployed and was in use by more than 55 , 000 MHS care providers in 481 Army , Navy and Air Force treatment facilities worldwide , including Combat Support Hospital s and Battalion Aid Station s in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan . Block 2 ( AHLTA version 3 . 3 ) was released in December 2008 and integrated robust dental documentation and optometry orders management capabilities ( the Spectacles Request Tracking System , or SRTS ) . Version 3 . 3 . 3 . X with client update 9 . 1 is currently fielded to physician and clinic staff workstations . The original plan was to phase in replacements for the CHCS Ancillary modules . However , these blocks of AHLTA were defunded . Subsequent blocks will modernize legacy system ancillary services ( laboratory , pharmacy , and radiology ) , order entry and results retrieval , inpatient documentation , and interface exchange with other MHS information support systems . Operations . Master Patient Indexing is a feature of the AHLTA Clinical Data Respository ( CDR ) . Over 100 CHCS host systems , DEERS ( the Defense Enrollment and Eligibility Reporting System ) , and AHLTA - Theater ( the version being used in Iraq and other areas ) all contributed patients into the CDR when it was created from 25 months of data pulls back in 2004 . Each CHCS patient registration links into AHLTA , some link to existing patients , but others are newly created . Complexity with patient names and methods of identifying them with other demographics can lead to duplication , both in a local CHCS system and in the central AHLTA CDR . There is currently a DHIMS contract aimed at improving the processes and automating the routines to resolve duplicate patients and prevent their creation in the future . Criticism . AHLTA has not been well received in some quarters . Described by some as " difficult to use " , the Army ' s Surgeon General stated that clinicians " spend as much or more time working around the system as they do with the system " . A problem with AHLTA is that many service members data is not captured and recorded ( therefore lost ) , when the patient is referred to outside ( Non - DOD ) providers for care . The care from outside providers could be captured and incorporated into AHLTA from Tricare via billing codes and records , but it is not . Almost all health data recordings are missing from AHLTA once a referral to an outside provider is made . This is a huge data gap in patient records and a flaw with AHLTA .