At the data level, the next move will be to make clinical data "computable" so that the CPRS software can read anything that the doctors can read, Kolodner said. That should start as early as this summer, he added, but the effort also depends on an ongoing, industrywide standardization of medical terms.

No one can quantify how much benefit the network has brought to the VA system. But Kolodner said that industrywide, 20 percent of lab tests take place because the results of the previous test could not be located, and one in seven admissions take place because of uncertainty caused by the absence of the patient's records. That does not happen in the VA system anymore, he noted.

But Beer foresees a bigger impact than that.

"Most doctors who train in the U.S. work in the VA hospital system at some point and will learn our computers," he noted. "When they go out into practice, they will want electronic records," and maybe health care industry computerization will rise above 10 percent.

"It would be wonderful if that happened," agreed Friedman.