It's too early to say whether the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments will move to a single, integrated electronic health record, said VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker while speaking to reporters Feb. 24.

"No matter what happens on a joint system with the DoD, we have to increase the pace of modernizing VistA--and that's why we're exploring the open source avenue to see if that would be useful to us," he said, referring to a recent request for information on creation a VA open source ecosystem.

"As a private sector person, I like to have a lot of irons in the fire at one time," Baker said. 

By late March, Baker and DoD officials will make a recommendation to the agency secretaries on how to move forward, he added.

"I can assure you, it will be very close cooperation between DoD and VA, whatever the right technical solution recommended is," said Baker.

Still, some aspects of a joint program have already been agreed upon, Baker said. Defense and VA have agreed that data standards, common applications, and the ability to plug and play with common applications must be part of it.

According to the CIO, the agencies have been working together for several months on a joint way forward. This joint project, whatever it will look like, fits nicely under the VA's umbrella goal of a Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record from enlistment through retirement.

- listen to the press call
- see VA's IT incident report for January 2010 (.pdf)

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VA plans for an open source VistA
Roger Baker touts VA and DoD health IT commonality at budget hearing
Audio: VA CIO Roger Baker's January IT report