Big News from the AHIC Meeting

VA Secretary James Nicholson announced at yesterday's American Health Information Community (AHIC) meeting that the Veterans Affairs Department and the Defense Department, which both operate hospital chains, plan to implement a joint, interoperable electronic health record system. Also at that meeting, the contractor teams seeking to develop a National Health Information Network, which will link electronic health record systems, demonstrated their prototypes/works in progress. More demonstrations will occur at next week's NHIN Forum. Finally, Secretary Leavitt officially accepted "thirty (30) consensus [health information technology interoperability] standards recommended by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)" in September 2006.