VA Secretary James Nicholson announced at yesterday’s American Health Information Community (AHIC) meeting that the Veterans Affairs Department and the Defense Department, which both operate hospital chains, plan to implement a joint, interoperable electronic health record system. Also at that meeting, the contractor teams seeking to develop a National Health Information Network, which will link electronic health record systems, demonstrated their prototypes/works in progress. More demonstrations will occur at next week’s NHIN Forum. Finally, Secretary Leavitt officially accepted “thirty (30) consensus [health information technology interoperability] standards recommended by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)” in September 2006.