HIMSS12: VA, DoD 'A Force That Can Move Markets'

The closest thing to a stampede at HIMSS12 occurred as soon as they opened the doors for the joint DoD/VA iEHR panel discussion – as people poured in faster than previous session attendees could swim upstream and out of the room. Even the conference officials furiously adding new rows of chairs couldn’t accommodate the crowd.

“Two competing forces are completely shaping our reality,” said David Wennergren, assistant deputy chief management officer at the Department of Defense said during “A new era in DoD/VA health IT.”

The first is the pace of health IT innovation, second being these turbulent economic times in which we live and work. “We can no longer afford to spend millions and millions of dollars,” Wennergren said. Nor can we stick with monolithic tightly-coupled technologies. “The future is about open architecture and modular approaches.”...