DOD, VA pass information sharing milestone

  • Published
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AFPN) --  Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs officials here Aug. 3 announced the departments have successfully tested and deployed an interface that was developed to extend the reach and capabilities of the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange.

With BHIE, the DOD and VA can share electronic health information on patients treated by both departments.

Following the completion of the system acceptance test at Madigan Army Medical Center, the military services received the first release of the interface and use began July 30. It allows providers at all military treatment facilities to access BHIE directly from AHLTA (the military's electronic health record), eliminating the requirement for login to a separate system to view data from the VA. 

This new interface also allows VA providers to access information from all DOD healthcare facilities. Currently, medication and allergy profiles, laboratory results including surgical pathology reports, and radiology reports are shared and viewed. The types of data that will be shared through BHIE and this interface will be expanded in future releases including patient problem lists, encounter notes, procedures, vital signs, family history, images, questionnaires and other documents.

Extending the reach of BHIE represents a major step toward making healthcare data on shared beneficiaries immediately and easily accessible to both DOD and VA healthcare providers. 

This is "a superb example of the commitment our departments have made to work hand in hand to provide quality and continuity of care for our beneficiaries," said Dr. S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. 

This initiative does not replace the longer-term continuing development of the CHDR interface, which allows the exchange of computable data between the DOD's Clinical Data Repository, or CDR, and the VA's Health Data repository, called HDR. Rather, it provides the means to accelerate and enlarge the scope and scale of data sharing capabilities between agencies in the near term. 

As the standards for information sharing continue to develop and mature, the ability to exchange computable clinical information will attain corresponding levels of sophistication. Expanded use of BHIE coupled with the progress made in real-time bidirectional exchanges of computable clinical information between DOD's CDR and the VA's HDR brings both departments closer to the ultimate goal of complete electronic interoperability.  

Comment on this story (comments may be published on Air Force Link)

Click here to view the comments/letters page