In North Chicago, a glimpse of the iEHR to come

North Chicago's James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, the remodeled Illinois hospital which has served as a pilot for Veterans Affairs- and Defense-department facility collaboration, began pushing the limits of AHLTA and VistA interaction before the integrated electronic health record project began. But the bits and pieces of progress at Lovell will form the bedrock of iEHR, said Col. Claude Hines, program manager of the Defense Health Information Management System.

"The foundation [for the iEHR] is already there," said Hines while speaking Aug. 9 at an AFCEA NOVA event in Vienna, Va. "We have to move data back and forth in real time, not like the normal data that we share with the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange. But we have to use two [enterprise service buses] to move data back and forth between both departments because it's transactional to support the healthcare," said Hines.