July 30, 2019 – Today, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced they successfully transferred 23.5 million Veteran health records from VistA to the new Cerner EHR. The move achieves interoperability between the VA and Department of Defense (DoD). It’s a significant feat, and one that signals the future of technology’s role in healthcare for our country’s heroes. Interoperability brings Veterans and their families one step closer to a seamless care experience. There’s so much more we can do.
Our founder, Jeff Ingle, acknowledged the progress. “As the first interactive patient care company to introduce bidirectional VistA/CPRS integration to the VA in 2013, we at eVideon are particularly excited about the future of Veteran experience and the role technology will play,” he said.
Our chief technology officer, Scott King, knows firsthand the benefits we can all realize through interoperability and advancing technologies:
“We’ve loved working with VA hospitals as we’ve done to date and what we’ve been able to accomplish together via the VistA/CPRS integration. In this next chapter, we look forward to using that same concept of bidirectional integration with Cerner. It’s not just about electronic records; EHRs are primarily used for and by clinicians. But with that bidirectional integration,we’re creating a better Veteran experience, as we have done with VistA.”
Interoperability isn’t just important for DoD and VA hospitals. It’s important across technologies and sites. Integrating provider-facing tools with Veteran-facing tools gives Veterans and their families more power and control of their care. Furthermore, while inpatient, digitizing workflows means Veterans have a virtual care guide.
King continued to elaborate on technology’s impact on Veterans. “We use that EHR data to automate workflows with trigger events. For example, a diagnosis code can trigger a particular video – blood sugar testing, for example. When the Veteran watches the video, a survey at the end will assess their comprehension. Depending on the Veteran’s response, branch logic can trigger new education content, alerts to care teams, or service workflows. In short, the future is wide open for automating several aspects of care, convenience, and experience for our Veterans. We’ve even done some great things with assistive devices - eye tracking, sip-and-puff, and voice recognition technologies to make sure all our Veterans benefit from the technology that’s available.”
The VA/DoD announcement also signals hope in the commercial sector. Migrating forty years of health records is no small undertaking. But the benefits are tangible for all of healthcare technology. In a world where the term “interoperability” is spoken frequently and often met with frustration, this first step proves that an interoperable future isn’t just a vision; it’s a reality we can all prepare for. For us at eVideon, the potential is limitless.
We sincerely congratulate the VA/DoD and are excited to see what the future holds for our customers and partners who work tirelessly to care for our Veterans.
About eVideon: eVideon Health has been delivering patient experience solutions since 2006. Beyond EHR integration, the solution integrates with other existing technologies (dietary, building management systems, RTLS, communication and more) to deliver interactive personalized care pathways, surveys/data, entertainment, and an automated smart room environment for patients.
