Internal watchdog blasts DoD's health IT efforts

The Defense Department's current approach to achieving health record interoperability with the Veterans Affairs Department is "manifestly inconsistent" with White House directives to adopt and use open data standards, according to a memo from the Pentagon's top systems evaluator.

A memo sent March 28 by J. Michael Gilmore, DoD's director of operational test and evaluation, to Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter argued the multi-year effort is destined to produce a costly system that "may or may not succeed." Federal News Radio obtained a copy of the memo.

Gilmore wrote DoD should stop all solicitations to industry for procuring a new health record system until DoD significantly revises its approach to the iEHR project and proceeds with "a much reduced budget focused on pursuing what the President has actually directed — defining and testing an architecture using open standards that enables rapid near-term progress on improving data sharing between the department and the VA."...