When 10 year Army medic Craig Carpenter returned from Desert Storm with diabetes, high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis that landed him in a wheelchair, the Washington DC Veteran's Hospital knew that his care would require extensive coordination. Faced with caring for thousands of veterans like Craig, the Department of Veteran's Affairs developed an extraordinary innovation: an electronic medical record that's paperless, filmless, fully accessible, fully integrated, completely secure, mobile and available to any doctor with clearance. It means both Craig and his doctors can monitor his conditions 24 hours a day from a home laptop. It means Craig won't spend days in the hospital having expensive tests repeated. It means that the cost of healthcare in the VA has remained the same while growing by 40% everywhere else. It means that healthcare has changed for all of us.
