VA’s Roger Baker Updates EHR Security Strategy

Outgoing Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) CIO Roger W. Baker provided testimony last week on the VA and Department of Defense (DoD) joint EHR venture. In doing so, he highlighted how the organizations plan on maximizing data security with the new technologies.

The DoD and VA had previously said that they wanted to focus on security with the new joint EHR, but Baker’s Feb. 27 testimony provided more concrete details on how the organizations plan on achieving that goal. One piece of the plan, according to govinfosecurity.com, is the VA bringing in the DoD Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC)’s common identification system as well as an ID system that caters to both DoD and VA employees. Additionally, the DoD and VA will jointly form a single network that allows both organization’s users to login instead of having connecting, fragmented networks that may put data at risk...