Ross Wilkers
Healthcare information technology is seen in many business and government circles as a high-growth market for many GovCon firms as agencies seek to upgrade the technology infrastructures that underpin their health initiatives.
ExecutiveGov, one of four Executive Mosaic news websites at the intersection of the public and private sectors, has highlighted comments from government leaders and cast its eye on what agencies are doing for current and future patients.
One project “EGov” has focused on is particular is the integrated electronic health records project of the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, through which the agencies wanted to share records of active and former soldiers in one system.
The agencies originally intended to build a single iEHR system, but announced in February that they would maintain their own systems and instead will focus on making them interoperable with one another.
Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki set a May deadline to have patient records available for download in the VA’s Blue Button platform as well.
More details on the proposed iEHR platform emerged in May when Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall said the departments could have a system up and running by the end of this calendar year.
Kendall also said the Pentagon was considering whether to use the VA’s VISTA software architecture or to acquire new software.
He will be the defense official in charge of healthcare records interoperability and modernization efforts and coordinate technical and acquisition aspects with the VA.
