The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments have agreed upon a common architectural framework for the integrated electronic health record system, or iEHR.

The iEHR will use DoD Architecture Framework 2.0, said officials from the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office June 15, while speaking at the Government Health IT Conference in Washington, D.C. DoDAF 2.0 requires data in the architecture to be transferable in accordance with the Physical Exchange Specification (PES) and to comply with DoDAF Meta Model (DM2) concepts, associations and attributes.

The two departments have also outlined a "to be" architecture that will result in 16 unique applications and services for DoD, six unique applications and services for VA and 30 common applications and services.  

"The iEHR requires both departments to widely integrate business requirements, acquisition and technical approaches," said Doug Felton, manager of enterprise architecture at the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office. The two departments are looking into shared acquisition and shared development of iEHR components, said Felton.

VA and DoD are also considering a clinician interface in addition to the patient user interface now in development, said Felton. VA Deputy Secretary Scott Gould recently said a graphical user interface for the iEHR would be complete by July.

Felton also told attendees the iEHR name may not have staying power.

"It's iEHR, but I heard just yesterday afternoon it might not be iEHR. That's one of the dynamics of working with these federal agencies is they're going to change the name," said Felton. "Please be flexible if the name change does happen," he added.

For more:
- see the iEHR architecture graphic
- see the slide deck (.pdf) from the presentation

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