Within two months from now the departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense will have completed a graphical user interface for its integrated electronic health record, or iEHR, said VA Deputy Secretary Scott Gould, during a May 18 hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

"We've already delivered a prototype of the new interface. We will have in place, by July of this year, the new graphical user interface that will be the front-end of this system," said Gould.

"It provides that common interface that both DoD docs and VA docs have said would optimize their ability to treat patients in the system. We will have a single sign on in North Chicago, by the end of this year and, lastly, we'll have significant functionality shared between the two agencies by June of '12," said Gould.

The departments are "moving down the road quickly," said Gould as he revealed the iEHR milestones.

"We're using open source techniques to increase our rate of innovation and improve the rates of change that we have in our electronic health record system," said Gould. At the same time, the departments are "turning to the private sector to build the applications that will be part of this joint, common electronic health platform," he added.

VA and DoD have also committed to using agile development to implement the system, said Gould, which is "bringing a sense of urgency and oversight and quality of management to this process that I think will avoid or lower the chance that we might misspend money in this process."

Gould reiterated that the iEHR will be adopt an open, common data standard and a common interface. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn said the use of common data is what will make the project a success. He added that the use of common data centers to store that data will also be integral.

For more:
- see the hearing page, which includes video and written testimonies

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