Where Federal Health IT Goes Next: Takeaways From the DoW/VA and Government Health IT Summit

If one idea carried through two days at the DSI DoW/VA and Government Health IT Summit this past week, it was this: Technology only counts when it reaches the person who needs it. That person might be a medic treating casualties with no reliable network, a clinician switching between systems to see one Veteran, or a family in a rural town an hour from the nearest clinic.

Leaders from the Defense Health Agency (DHA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Navy Medicine, DARPA, FDA, and HHS gathered in Washington, DC, to discuss the future of federal health IT and approached it from different angles. Still, they kept arriving at the same conclusions.

Data has to follow the patient

For Navy Medicine, the stakes are operational. In a future Pacific fight, forces will be dispersed and patient evacuation may be delayed. In that environment, shared medical data is no longer a convenience. It is a requirement. The goal is for record data, blood supply, and facility capacity to flow into the same operational picture commanders use for every other decision.

DARPA brought the same urgency from the point of injury. Its early work supporting special operations medics ran on commercial phones and text messages because military networks weren’t available. The lesson stuck. Tools at the edge should collect data locally and sync when a connection returns, and they need to be intuitive enough that a medic under pressure will actually use them.

At the enterprise level, DHA’s data and analytics team is doing the less visible work that makes this possible. It is cataloging data across more than 150 systems, building certified data products, and planning a marketplace where the Services and combatant commands can find what they need.

The record is the foundation, not the finish line

VA’s EHR modernization office reported real momentum. Thirteen VA sites are scheduled to go live on the Federal EHR in 2026, with 26 more next year and 28 the year after. The office credited local leaders and clinicians for owning their transitions, and it was candid about what comes next. Clinicians still open many separate systems to see a single patient, and the goal now is a cohesive experience instead of another layer of technology.

The FEHRM Office described the connections underneath. The Joint Health Information Exchange already reaches national networks covering about 95 percent of U.S. healthcare. The office also supports becoming a clearinghouse where outside technology can be tested once for both DoW and VA.

Ambient documentation showed why that cohesive experience matters. Navy Medicine, DHA, and VA all pointed to ambient tools as a way to give clinicians time and attention back. VA added that the value depends on onboarding, training, and evaluation, not the technology alone. Speakers from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the industry were equally clear that clinicians want to remain the decision-maker, with AI safety assessed continuously as context changes.

Start with the problem, and plan for failure

Some of the most memorable moments came from speakers who urged the room not to lead with technology. HRSA’s Office for the Advancement of Telehealth pointed out that many rural clinics still need basic connectivity, interoperability, and licensure pathways before any AI or workflow layer can help. VA’s Digital and Remote Health Center for Innovation added that digital care now reaches the home and beyond, and that Veterans have long embraced it. Families value it too, since it spares them half a day off work for a short appointment.

Resilience came up as a patient safety issue, too. UC San Diego’s Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity pointed to peer-reviewed research linking ransomware attacks to worse patient outcomes, even at nearby hospitals that were not attacked. The advice was to assume any system can be compromised and to invest in recovery. DHA’s Medical Device Integration Office added that it checks whether data reaches the right patient and encounter, not just whether a device connects securely.

Buying differently to move faster

Acquisition leaders from both departments described changes the industry should welcome. DHA is moving from programs to portfolios, with short statements of objectives in place of lengthy work statements and commercial solution openings for capabilities that already work. VA’s Office of Acquisition and Logistics stressed timing: Input has the most influence early, before a requirement becomes urgent. Both departments are moving toward outcome-based contracting.

Where digital care fits

The HHS Office of Inspector General offered a way to tie it all together. Interoperability depends on trusted data, innovation depends on governance, and modernization depends on trust. Success should be measured by whether care improved, not by whether a system went live.

That is a useful standard for digital care in federal health. It has to work inside the authoritative record and the clinician’s existing workflow, and keep care moving when networks are limited or systems go down. Just as important, it has to show measurable results long after launch.

Those priorities line up closely with the work eVisit does every day. Expanding access, whether for a Service member far from a military treatment facility or a Veteran in a rural town, is where digital care has the most to offer. So is giving care teams time back by fitting into the workflows and records they already use. As federal buyers shift toward outcomes, success will come down to whether more people reach the care they need and whether that care costs less to deliver.

We’re grateful to DSI and to every speaker who shared their perspective, and we look forward to continuing these conversations with our federal health partners.