VA/DoD fully integrated EHR solution still many years off

The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments will not deploy an integrated electronic health record until 2017, eight years after President Obama kick-started the project, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki...

...The reason for the long delay from concept to execution for the iEHR has been partly bureaucratic. Defense and VA did not agree on the basic structure and management of the iEHR until May 2011, and top officials from both departments deferred signing the charter for the Interagency Program Office, which will manage deployment of iEHR until October 2011...

...Shinseki emphasized iEHR will be “open in architecture and nonproprietary in design to expand information sharing [and to] eliminate gaps between our two robust health care systems,” in keeping with the use of open source software that he backed in April.

This approach conflicts with Defense plans to use commercial software in developing iEHR, according to a Pentagon report submitted to Congress in April -- the opening salvo in what a former top VA official, who declined to be identified, called a battle between the two departments over the basic structure of the iEHR.