The Department of Defense announced Thursday a further step in its ability to share electronic health information with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The latest development allows each agency to view the other's clinical encounters, medical procedures, and lists of medical problems on shared patients.
This is the third enhancement announced this year to the ability of DoD and VA to exchange information. In October, VA was provided access to DoD in-theater clinical data. In July, pharmacy, allergy, microbiology, chemistry/hematology data, and radiology reports were made available.
"We are committed to providing responsive support to service members as they transition from active duty to veteran status and we are working to make the transition as seamless as possible," said Chuck Campbell, the Military Health System (MHS) chief information officer.
The improvements are being made to the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) and the Clinical Data Repository/Health Data Repository (CHDR).
BHIE, first implemented in 2004, provides a real-time interface between the Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA) Clinical Data Repository and the VA’s electronic health record system, known as VistA.
The CHDR software synchronizes data between DoD and VA repositories to enable the exchange of information for shared patients.
Data standardization remains a significant hurdle to the ultimate goal of VA/DoD electronic medical record interoperability. To achieve interoperability, both agencies must standardize how data is defined, structured and communicated and agree on interagency code sets for domains such as pharmacy, allergy, chemistry, radiology, and others.
Most of these elements have not yet been standardized.
But the two agencies are committed to making incremental improvements, allowing more records to follow patients as they move from the military to the veterans health system. "This helps ensure that all VA providers have access to the health data needed to expedite care for these patients," said Campbell.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
