United Kingdom Eyes VA’s Electronic Health Record

The Veterans Affairs Department and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service have teamed up to share ideas, strategies and leadership for development of health information technology, opening the possibility that the NHS could use VA’s electronic health record system. Peter Levin, the former VA Chief Technology Officer who retired this month, told Nextgov the Pentagon also should adopt VA electronic health record.

On March 13, VA, the 3millionlives telehealth project backed by the U.K. Department of Health, and 2020Health , a U.K. think tank, released a 90-page report , Making Connections, which calls for greater collaboration between NHS and the Veterans Health Administration on health IT. Julia Manning, chief executive of 2020Health, said in an introduction to the report that cooperation between VHA and NHS could trigger deployment of digital health services in the UK and contribute to the development of specialized telehealth services within VHA...

...The report suggested the NHS could exploit VA’s electronic health record system, the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA. The report noted that the “open-source nature of the VistA software means it is a continuously developing and highly adaptable programme.”...