NextGov is running a story about "re-engineering" plans for AHLTA:
The Defense Department has laid the groundwork for a radical shift in the way it processes and stores soldiers’ and veterans’ electronic health records, planning to re-engineer a system a network it spent $6 billion and eight years developing in-house for one based on industry standards, commercial software and re-use of existing code that will serve Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department, top officials told Nextgov.
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AHLTA has been a source of controversy. In July, Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, said MHS needed to move away from AHLTA because military doctors were "fed up" with the system and it was "sometimes down and sometimes slow.” He also said MHS planned to work with the VA toward a “converged evolution” of AHLTA and VISTA, which the department started developing in 1985.
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Those developing the architecture for the new Defense-VA electronic health records system must heed VA’s software development culture, which is based on clinician involvement at every stage of the process, said Joseph Dal Molin, founder of e-cology Corp. in Toronto and who works on deployments of an open source version of VA’s electronic health record software.
Comment: AHLTA had a real benefit in that it created had a global health record. Physicians overseas could review progress notes from stateside doctor visits. As described above it has had its problems. Many military physicians complained about its inefficient graphical user interface and tunnel vision for workload output tracked in the system. Re-tooling of AHLTA is a great opportunity for the DoD to work collaboratively and improve its relationship with physicians.
One of the benefits of the VA's Vista eletronic medical records system was that the source code was released and many spin-off products were developed. Could the new AHLTA be released under an open source license? This way AHLTA could be used by a community hospital for example. The DoD may have a great opportunity to give back to the public here.