VA, DoD Award Contract to Work on 'Heart' of Integrated Record System

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments achieved a major milestone last month in their quest to develop an integrated electronic health record (iEHR) system for service members and veterans.

The agencies selected Fairfax, Va.-based ASM Research Inc. to manage a critical portion of the iEHR, called the enterprise service bus, which will allow various components of the future system to communicate with each other and with VA and DoD health information stored in data centers. The contract, which was awarded under VA's Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology, or T4, program, has a ceiling value of $102.6 million.

The enterprise service bus is "the heart of the iEHR," VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said in an interview. "Everything will talk to it or through it." Baker said VA and DoD are still finalizing an estimated four- to five-year development plan for the iEHR. Development of the iEHR is tied to the larger Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record that will enable better sharing of veterans' health and benefits data, but the iEHR is a separate program that requires its own oversight, he said...