LaVerne Council, CIO of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a Congressional hearing the agency plans to reveal a new digital health platform this year, reports FedScoop.
Ms. Council gave testimony Thursday in a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs' Subcommittee on Health. Here are four things to know about the digital health platform and the VA's plans.
1. The "veteran-centric" digital health platform seeks to bring processes of the military health systems into the present day, digitized environment, according to Ms. Council. "We decided what the right thing to do was to lay out the new digital health platform, because that's really what's needed for the future," Ms. Council said, according to the report.
2. Ms. Council and David Shulkin, MD, VA under secretary for health, decided to design the platform to reflect technologies and capabilities used in the private sector, according to the report. Dr. Shulkin plans to test a working prototype of the platform this summer.
3. The health platform reportedly leverages FHIR [Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources], a standard for interoperability. Additionally, the platform is reported to be based in the cloud.
4. Ms. Council said such a platform is necessary to supplement the EHR. "The EHR today is really just the heartbeat of the organism, and it does not have everything that is needed to mandate and manage care in the community, to deal with the needs of the female veteran, and also to support the overall veteran experience and the clinical management," she said in the testimony, according to the report.
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