In coordination with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and the U.S. Army Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), the Georgetown University Medical Center will host the National Forum on the Future of the Defense Health Information System. The forum aims to develop strategic steps necessary to maximize the current and future benefits of health information technology.

AHLTA, the Military Health System's (MHS) electronic health record (EHR), is becoming an integral part of the Nation’s health information technology infrastructure. In his January 2004 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called for every American to have an EHR by 2014. The Department of Defense (DOD) completed the world-wide deployment of AHLTA in December 2006. It supports uniform, high quality, health promotion and healthcare delivery to more than 9.1 million MHS beneficiaries. This rapid progress, both technically and operationally, is compelling our nation‘s leaders to contemplate the future of health informatics and the EHR in the context of a dramatically transformed system.

The forum’s speakers will include representatives from Congress and leading experts from academia, industry and government. Topics that will be covered include:

• Establishing Longitudinal Health Record (LHR)
• What is the scope of the future LHR - Clinical, Personal, Population Health?
• What sectors that are relevant to the LHR – DOD, VA, Private Sector, etc..?
• How do we establish such capabilities?
• What are the barriers in establishing the LHR?
• How do we integrate new technologies?
• Knowledge Discovery and Management
• How do we develop an effective data warehouse or "Digital Nervous System"?
• What new insights can we gain from a comprehensive LHR/Data Warehouse framework?
• What new applications might be possible?
• How do we integrate imaging, bioinformatics and public health informatics?
• How do we generate biosurveillance and population health indications & warnings?
• Systems Architecture and Software Engineering
• What is the appropriate systems architecture for flexible, agile software development?
• What are the applicability of SOA, IRD, GRID computing?
• What is on the horizon in Internet technologies?
• What is the role of open source software engineering?
• How can one integrate emerging innovation in a modular, infinitely scalable manner?
• Inter-operability
• How do we achieve Syntactic Inter-operability?
• How do we achieve Semantic Inter-operability?
• How do we evolve with emerging Standards?
• How do we integrate new Medical Devices?
• How do we achieve interoperability with the National Health Information Network?