Department of Veterans Affairs www.va.gov Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson as keynoter opened the AFCEA Washington D.C Chapter’s “Health Summit: Advancing Federal Healthcare through Health Analytics and Connected Devices” http://dc.afceachapters.org held in Bethesda Maryland July 31, 2015.
He discussed how effectively the VA is able to care for veterans using the latest technology. For example, in the field of audiology, if a veteran needs to have their hearing aid adjusted, an app can connect with the device and immediately tune up the hearing aid.
Also, at the VA, medications can be tracked, telehealth provides virtual care in many areas, the use of mobile devices has the capacity to monitor care, it is possible to identify and predict if a veteran is at risk for suicide and help with treatment, plus there have been advances in encrypted messaging.
As Deputy Secretary Gibson pointed out, DOD and the VA are already involved in programs that are capable of exchanging information. For example, the new Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP) is being tested to see if a veteran’s medical history can be obtained from just one place.
Another program, the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange (BHIE) a health information project enables two way sharing of personal health information between DOD and the VA. The data shared under BHIE includes pre-and post-deployment physicals and progress notes.
The Joint Legacy Viewer (JLV) discussed at numerous meetings, combines data from the VA and DOD health information systems and displays the information in chronological order on a screen. So far, the JLV is available at seven VA facilities and two Defense facilities.
By the end of this fiscal year, the JLV will enable DOD and VA providers to see nearly all of the EHRs stored in both the DOD and VA to enable providers to look at doctors’ notes, problem lists, and inpatient discharge summaries.