After struggling for years to bring their clinical databases together, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs department have decided to move their EMR systems over to a service-oriented architecture. The new SOA architecture will help the two entities share outpatient clinical data.

DoD and the VA are migrating to an SOA infrastructure on the recommendation of Booz Allen Hamilton, whose study recommended the web-services-based architecture, modeled after loosely-coupled, reusable components. The move puts to bed rumors that the DoD might ditch its AHLTA EHR in favor of the VA's VistA.

One would hope that this ends the long, long struggle the two agencies have faced in attempting to integrate EMR data, largely without success. Combined, the agencies have spent $1.8 billion on health records initiatives since 1998.

To learn more about technical decision:
- read this Government Health IT piece

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