Pentagon reassigns EHR project.

• Position: EHR - Electronic health record - Brief article

It's never good news when the boss takes over your project. Just ask the Pentagon's Military Health System (MHS), which had been tasked with developing a single integrated health records system (iEHR) for the military, in conjunction with the Veterans Affairs Department.

Nextgov reported in April that after having spent $1 billion on building a new system, MHS announced it wanted to take a different course. J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, wrote a memo to Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stating that MHS preferred to buy commercial health IT software rather than develop systems that are based on open standards as mandated by President Obama in 2009. He added that the department was preparing to distribute a request for proposals.

That's when the boss stepped in.

"I...