Department of Defense (DoD)

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Vt.'s US Rep. Says Vets Need Better Health Records

Wilson Ring | Boston.com | July 22, 2013

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch said Monday he is co-sponsoring a bill that would require the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department to find a better way to share health information so veterans can have better access to their military health records. Read More »

We Are Entering A New Era Of Health Information Exchange

Brian Ahier | Healthcare IT News | September 4, 2012

The Nationwide Health Information Network Exchange (NwHIN Exchange, or just Exchange) has been operating as an ONC program since 2007. For the past three years, a rapidly growing community of public and private organizations (Exchange Participants) has been routinely sharing information in production. Read More »

What A Concept: VA Pitches Its Electronic Health Records System To Defense

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | February 27, 2013

The Defense Department went shopping for a new electronic health record system on Feb. 8, just two days after plans to develop a $4 billion integrated electronic health record with the Veterans Affairs Department went south. Read More »

What EHR Vendors Need To Know About Applying For Upcoming DoD Demos

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | October 8, 2013

Nothing like a tight turnaround on a massive tech and consulting project: The DoD on Friday published a notice — albeit neither solicitation nor RFP — revealing that during the week after next it will hold demonstrations essentially courting the EHR to replace its AHLTA. Oh, yes, and applications are due end of October 9, as in tomorrow. Read More »

What Kind Of Problem Is The ACA Rollout For Liberalism?

Mike Konczal | Next New Deal | October 23, 2013

“This massive IT launch sure came in on time, under budget, and without headaches” is a statement that nobody has ever said. But even controlling for that, Healthcare.gov looks to be having a disastrous launch. Read More »

What The DoD Is Learning From Pediatrics

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | November 27, 2013

The Department of Defense is turning to a pediatric health system to help find better ways of reintegrating military docs into civilian healthcare and making sure they’re still as clinically savvy as when they left. Read More »

What's wrong with IT at Veterans Affairs?

Frank Konkel | FCW | May 1, 2013

Projects are stalled, and top leaders have departed. Investigations and agency sources paint a bleak picture inside VA's IT office. Read More »

When Will It Stop? Sexual Assault Claims Pile Up In Military

Meredith Clark | MSNBC | May 18, 2013

“There is no silver bullet,” for stopping military sexual assault President Obama said earlier this week. Surely, that came as no surprise to his former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who said more than a year ago: “There is no silver bullet when it comes” to solving military sexual assault. Read More »

Why Do Medicare, Medicaid And Veterans Affairs Deal With Drug Costs Differently?

David Sell | Philly.com | April 9, 2013

Countries sometimes do things differently from other countries or gain reputations for doing certain things well or poorly. But within a country, within the same federal government, does it make sense to do things differently among departments or programs that are providing essentially the same service? Read More »

Why I Fought for Open Source in the Air Force

The AOC grew up out of a pick-up game of sorts between the users (Air Force personnel) and the vendors (commercial and government programs). The users simply bought what they wanted, and the vendors happily took their money and installed the systems. The result was a collection of standalone systems; each came installed with its own hardware and software, and there was very little sharing of resources between them. While the team made it work through sheer willpower, it was horribly inefficient, a maintenance nightmare, not user friendly, and agility was measured in decades. Our job was to take that mess and fix it...This was my first trial-by-fire experience that showed the true resistance within the Air Force and Department of Defense (DoD) to open source software...

Why Is True Interoperability Crucial To Healthcare’s Future?

Kyle Murphy | EHR Intelligence | January 6, 2014

As the work between the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) has shown, true EHR interoperability is no small feat. The two federal agencies have put in considerable time, energy, and resources and still find themselves short of achieving fully interoperable EHR systems and under the gun with Congress demanding to see a detailed plan by the end of the month. Read More »

Why Suicide Prevention Is Part of Population Health Strategy

Paul B. Hofmann and Jerry Reed | Hospitals & Health Networks | May 9, 2016

As hospitals and health systems recognize the need to devote more time and attention to population health management and improving community health, more effort correspondingly must be focused on behavioral health services. In response, the American Hospital Association has launched an initiative to assist hospitals with behavioral health...

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Why US Government IT Fails So Hard, So Often

Sean Gallagher | Ars Technica | October 10, 2013

The rocky launch of the Department of Health and Human Services' HealthCare.gov is the most visible evidence at the moment of how hard it is for the federal government to execute major technology projects. But the troubled "Obamacare" IT system—which uses systems that aren't connected in any way to the federal IT infrastructure—is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the government's IT problems. Read More »

Will Watson Help Solve The Mystery Of The Missing DOD EHR?

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | April 24, 2014

As the Department of Defense edges closer to choosing one lucky vendor to support its planned department-wide EHR system, IBM is doing some strategic shifting of its own by adding technology from its Watson supercomputer to its federal health care repertoire.  With a new request for information (RFI) released by the DOD, asking for details about infrastructure requirements to replace its aging ALHTA system, the department is putting a contract valued around $11 billion up for grabs.

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Wisconsin reps trying to torpedo VA's open source strategy

For those of you folks who think that open health is a staid field, this week saw the unfolding of an epic scandal. NexGov's inimitable reporter, Bob Brewin, author of the column What's Brewin, got his hands on a stash of documents showing that elected representatives from Wisconsin are trying to torpedo the open source strategy being pursued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Kudos to VA's CIO, Roger Baker, for standing up for what's right.

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