Veterans Affairs plans to have its hospital clinicians start using a VA version of the DOD Joint Patient Tracking Application on Monday to keep tabs on wounded warriors evacuated from Afghanistan and Iraq, reports Bob Brewin of Government Executive. Edward Huycke, VA’s chief DOD coordination officer, told Brewin that all of VA’s 154 hospitals and more than 800 clinics will be able to review DOD medical records through the new Web-based Veterans Tracking Application. VA announced earlier this year that the two departments were developing a common electronic health record system. Lawmakers have expressed mounting skepticism that VA and DOD would ever share such data.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.