VA to Make National VLER Deployment Decision

Some light was shed on the progress that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been making on its Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) project at a National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) webinar earlier this week. The VLER project was mandated by President Obama in April 2009 to drive the linking of private sector and veteran data to “contain administrative and medical information from the day an individual enters military service throughout their military career, and after they leave the military."

The VA, which has 153 hospitals and more than 1,300 sites of care, has been working on several interoperability projects and pushing toward nationwide deployment of the VLER, according to Tim Cromwell, VA’s director of standards and interoperability. “In terms of the electronic health record and the use of technology, throughout the country the VA is in a very good position to help develop the interoperability projects that we all need,” he said...