The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments have started testing in their Hawaii facilities an application that will provide physicians from both departments a common view of patient information.
The graphical interface provides a single point of entry and a first step to what will become a joint electronic health record.
The online tool enables the clinician to capture all of the information from a patient from VA VistA and DOD AHLTA electronic medical record systems, combines and collates the information so it is presented as a single medical record to the physician, said Roger Baker, VA CIO.
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VA and DOD clinicians see the same information and can identify whether that data originates from VistA or AHLTA systems.
“It’s all presented together. It’s usable from a calculation standpoint. You can pull medical images from either facility and present them in diagnostic quality on the interface,” he said May 27 in a briefing with reporters.
A limited number of users are testing the graphical user interface (GUI) at Tripler Army Medical Center and VA’s Pacific Islands Health Care System in Honolulu, Hawaii. VA and DOD will begin piloting the interface sometime this summer at the James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, where VA and DOD are developing joint health IT capabilities, Baker said.
The interface is browser-based and “extremely configurable,” making it clinician friendly, he said. A group of DOD and VA physicians defined what they needed for the interface. Baker said that as the interface is more widely used across the departments physicians may offer more innovations to it.
“Our goal is that as we get down the road no matter what is happening underneath, whether it’s an AHLTA system or VistA system, and what modules that we are placing in those, the clinicians, whether they are VA or DOD, are looking at exactly the same interface and exactly the same information. It should prove to be very powerful,” Baker said.
Currently, VA’s VistA and DOD’s AHLTA systems have their own large installed base of software applications. The joint EHR will include both proprietary and open source software. VA is developing an open source track to modernize VistA and will incorporate the approach with DOD in the joint system.
VA and DOD will move incrementally to a joint electronic health record system to avoid disrupting clinicians treating patients at their medical centers. Baker said he anticipates the process taking four to six years including incorporating pharmacy and lab modules.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and DOD Secretary Robert Gates meet monthly to advance plans for the joint EHR, with their next meeting scheduled for June 23, Baker said. The have already agreed on a common technical architecture, data and services and exchange standards.
The departments also anticipate developing a virtual single database, where the electronic record system can talk with DOD data and VA data.
“I believe the intention is to get to a point where there is a single repository for all the data related to an individual’s medical record, whether generated in DOD or VA, and I might add through the nationwide health information network,” he said.
The plan is to reach out to private sector facilities where an individual’s data also resides and incorporate it into their virtual lifetime electronic record, he said.
