DoD-VA Joint Electronic Health Record to be Housed in DISA Cloud

The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments' integrated electronic health record--or iEHR, as it's being called--will be housed in a cloud computing environment hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency, said VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker.

"One of the things the two secretaries, of Defense and Veterans Affairs, have agreed [to] is we'll utilize DISA data centers as part of our joint electronic health record system," said Baker, while speaking at a May 4 event in Washington, D.C. sponsored by TechAmerica.

The iEHR will have "all the data in a single place so that for the military member it's seamless for them," Beth McGrath, chief management officer at DoD, said earlier at the same event.

Already VA is moving all electronic health record systems out of hospitals and into regional data centers, said Baker, referring to the transition as "cloud VistA." VA hospitals often don't know where their VistA system is actually located "and they really don't care," said Baker.