Progress on Sharing Data?:

The Pentagon has awarded a $10.3 million one-year contract to Northrop Grumman to deploy and maintain a system that will enable DOD and VA to “seamlessly share patient information,” according to a Northrop release. Lawmakers have been imploring the two agencies to work together, citing earlier this year a “lack of urgency” to undertake the necessary work. And, more recently the Presidential commission charged with reviewing care for troops wounded in the war on terror, recommended a more rapid transfer of information as one of its key proposals. Northrop’s task centers on the so-called Clinical and Health Data Repository Initiative, which is supposed to permit “real-time exchange” of data between DOD’s AHLTA and VA’s HealtheVet systems. Earlier this year, DOD said it was extending AHLTA to VA, so the two would be using the same system.