The Joint Incentive Fund (JIF) Authorization creates innovative DoD/VA sharing initiatives. In 2009, DoD and VA commenced a biosurveillance JIF project whose principle objectives include improved situational awareness of combined VA/ DoD populations 1 and determining the optimal business model allowing both agency biosurveillance programs to operate more efficiently by: 1) consolidating information technology assets; 2) targeting enhanced collaboration for improved public health outcomes; and 3) improving buying power, and return on investment. We analyzed various interoperability models aimed at biosurveillance data sharing, asset consolidation and enhanced collaboration. Potential end states to be evaluated include maintaining separate Departmental systems, bidirectional exchange of data to separately managed systems, consolidation of data within one Department and shared access to a common system, consolidation of data in a neutral repository accessed by separately run legacy systems, or a custom developed biosurveillance solution utilizing a common data repository.
Objective
Determine an optimal course of action for achieving a more mission and cost-effective model for implementing combined or collaborative biosurveillance across the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Defense (DoD).