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Technology has the power to transform health care costs, outcomes and patient experience, and the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs are committed to a collaborative approach that helps achieve these goals together.

“This endeavor to merge two health care systems together, in terms of situational awareness and the ability for information to flow back and forth is precedent setting.  It has never been done before, bar none, across the nation,” said Debra Filippi, director of the departments of Defense/Veteran’s Affairs Interagency Program Office, in a discussion about the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center at the 2011 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Conference held in Orlando, Fla.

The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs share more electronic health data now than ever before, and continue to improve interoperability capabilities of the departments’ electronic health records.

“We share a lot of health data electronically, unprecedented amounts,” said Katharine Murray, chief of interagency coordination for the Military Health System Office of the Chief Information Officer. “As far as we know, there are no two other agencies that are sharing the amount of data that we are sharing today

The Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record initiative launched April 9, 2009 following President Obama's direction to the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to create a “virtual” lifetime electronic record that results from the ability to seamlessly share, access and exchange data in order to provide comprehensive health, benefits and administrative information for service members, veterans, and their beneficiaries and designees. VLER will contain administrative and medical information from the day Service members enter military service throughout their military career, and after they leave the military.