San Diego Helps Launch DoD/VA Information Exchange
Story Number: NNS020822-14
Release Date: 8/22/2002 9:45:00 PM
By Doug Sayers, National Naval Medical Center San Diego
SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- Powered by an initial grant from the Navy’s eBusiness program, Naval Medical Center San Diego’s directorate for informatics has launched a pilot program to increase DoD and VA data exchange capabilities.
The program builds on a prior collaborative effort called Easy-CHCS, which created a Web-based provider portal with access to clinical information, along with appointment and consultation management capabilities.
"Patients often schedule subspecialty appointments by going to the clinics in person to avoid waiting for mail notification of a potentially inconvenient appointment, or waiting for phone contact from the clinic,” said Lt. Cmdr. Emory A. Fry, Medical Corps. With Easy-CHCS, providers can order consultations and book follow-up and subspecialty appointments at the point of service.
The portal proved to be so cost effective that it is being deployed DoD-wide early next year.
Fry said the new DoD-VA prototype builds on the Easy-CHCS portal and will allow DoD and the Veterans Administration providers controlled access to each other’s records from anywhere in the Federal Health Care System.
"Such data access is essential to meeting the President’s mandate for greater resource sharing between the two systems,” he said.
The pilot program seeks to incorporate a number of components built for other government information technology initiatives into the Easy-CHCS portal architecture.
“The necessary pieces are ready to be woven into comprehensive Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) based architecture,” said Fry. He said he believes a demonstrable pilot will be available by January 2003.
CORBA is a means for computers across the country to communicate.
A number of other functions are also undergoing integration into the portal such as XML (eXchange Markup Language) based clinical notes, wireless handhelds, digital radiology images, and the incorporation of dictated operation reports, narrative summaries, and consult results.
The seed money eBusiness provides may lead to many more IT innovations that will increase productivity, enhance patient care and offer greater resource sharing opportunities with other healthcare agencies who interact with Navy Medicine.
