REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. --The program built to specifically support the unique technology U.S. military hospitals and medical treatment facilities require has closed shop.

The U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville’s Facility Technology Integration – Medical (FTI-MED) Program ceased operation Oct. 1 due to the Defense Health Agency (DHA) establishing an in-house, enterprise solution to execute most of the FTI-MED mission using internal DHA personnel.

For more than 10 years, the FTI-MED program provided technical expertise in the design, development, procurement, integration, installation, and project management oversight for the implementation of Facility Communications Distribution Systems (FCDS) for the Department of Defense medical community.

Stacey Phillips, FTI-MED program manager, said the decision by DHA to in-house the work obviously decreased the FTI-MED workload.

“Through multiple discussions internally it was determined that the best course of action is to sunset the FTI-MED Program and transfer the remaining projects as well as the resources to the FTI-General (FTI-GEN) and Cybersecurity programs.”

Phillips said the FTI team will continue executing all active FTI-MED contracts until they are complete.

“The contracts we already awarded, we'll continue to provide support until they end,” she said.

“We’ve worked closely with DHA and individual medical facilities to ensure we are doing everything we can to guarantee there's no gap in service during the transition of support from FTI-MED to DHA.”

The FTI Branch recognizes that new medical technology type projects, such as procurement or upgrading nurse call systems, will still be coming to Huntsville Center. However, the projects will be executed by the experts within the FTI-GEN program.

Ron Brook, FTI Branch chief, said the Project Delivery Team (PDT) members supporting the few remaining tasks for FTI-MED are still necessary for the continual, full-time support of the remaining efforts as well as new work coming in under the FTI-GEN and Cyber programs.

Therefore, Brook said, there was no impact to the support required from the PDT as the FTI-MED Program sunset.

“All new tasks we get that would have been presented to FTI-MED are being managed and awarded by the FTI-GEN or Cybersecurity Programs.”

For more than a decade, FTI-MED had a large impact on military medical facilities and hospitals across the globe. FTI-MED awarded contracts valued at more than $135 million for fielding operations and sustainment of medical information systems for Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

From 2018-2022, FTI-MED supported a $90 million Single Award Task Order Contract (SATOC) providing DHA medical staff withVoceraWireless and Hands-free Internal Communication Systems.

Phillips said the work the FTI-MED team did for the Navy’s Mercy and Comfort hospital ships was a program highlight due to the ships expeditionary mission.

“They would call us and say ‘We're coming to port. We've got to have this fixed or this done,’ and within two or three days we had to get something awarded to ensure they maintained deployment readiness.”