The Defense Health Agency and Department of Veterans Affairs are working to create a continuity of health care from the moment an American enlists in the armed forces to their golden years as a retired service member. Bill Tinston, director of the Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Program Office, is the office’s first official director, a position in which he intends to operationalize the FEHRM as it delivers health IT solutions for the single, common federal electronic health record.

The use of data and the amount captured and analyzed across government is projected to exponentially increase, which infrastructure is going to need to keep up with. Insights in these data sets have impactful potential for health care services for how health providers and researchers explore treating patients, diagnosing disease and more. Dell Technologies Director of Federal Healthcare Maheen Mirza discusses how government can best unlock the potential of data capabilities through modernization of infrastructure and cloud services.

Efforts to modernize record keeping, such as electronic health care records, and maintaining health and medical information necessitates modern approaches to streamline manual processes toward a digital workflow. Converting paper to digital files for cloud computing can facilitate this transition.

• Justin Meyer, Deputy Director, Acquisition Programs, U.S. Coast Guard
• Lauren Thompson, Director of Interoperability, Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Program Office
• Christina Wong, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Regulated Industries, DocuSign

Organizations dedicated to advancing and providing mental health care services have focused on the availability of remote counseling during the pandemic. These leaders discuss the tech initiatives that are providing greater access of these digital services to support mental health and addiction treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Christina Armstrong, Clinical Psychologist, Office of Connected Care, Veterans Health Administration (VHA)
• Marquis Barefield, Assistant National Legislative Director, Disabled American Veterans (DAV)
• Jacob Warren, Director, Center for Rural Health and Health Disparities, Mercer University School of Medicine

Advances in health IT are allowing for better management of public health, including the tracking of viral outbreaks and government response to public health crises. New technologies and developments will assist health networks in managing the demands of COVID-19 and better anticipating future challenges.

• Jonathan Alboum, Federal CTO and Principal Digital Strategist, ServiceNow
• Dr. Andrew Gettinger, Chief Clinical Officer, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
• Jonathan Weiner, Founding Director, Center for Population Health Information Technology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University

Federal agencies dedicated to improving health care outcomes across the country are strengthening their communication strategies to inform stakeholders during COVID-19. This includes taking advantage of digital communication tools to analyze and distribute various messaging campaigns both internally and externally to agencies.

• Christy Choi, Deputy Director, Office of Communications, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
• Peter F. Garrett, Director, Office of Communications and Public Liaison, National Cancer Institute (NCI)
• Charissa Pallas, Director, Office of Communications, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)