On Wednesday, Department of Veterans Affairs CIO Roger Baker said that the integrated electronic health record system that the VA is developing with the Department of Defense will be deployed across the U.S. in stages from 2014 to 2017, Federal Computer Week reports (Lipowicz, Federal Computer Week, 5/23).
Background
VA and DOD are integrating their EHR systems so every service member can maintain a single EHR throughout his or her career and lifetime (iHealthBeat, 3/22).
According to Baker, the integrated EHR will cost $4 billion to develop.
Launch of Basic Integrated EHR
Baker said the two agencies will install a basic version of the integrated EHR in hospitals in San Antonio and the Hampton Roads, Va., area. He said it will allow clinicians to tap into existing EHRs used by the agencies (Brewin, NextGov, 5/24).
Baker noted that work will continue on most of the 127 medical applications designed to run on the existing systems. According to Baker, the applications will be replaced and developed for the new system over the 2014 to 2017 period.
Baker said the basic integrated EHR also will include:
- A common graphical user interface;
- A data map to the Healthcare Data Dictionary; and
- An enterprise services bus for messaging between the data and the applications (Federal Computer Week, 5/23).