Last June, the House Armed Services Committee blasted the Defense Department for its inability to track head drugs taken by troops engaged in combat operations.
Here we are almost a year later, and, according to Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant Defense secretary for health affairs, not much progress has been made in capturing that prescription drug info at the pointy end of the spear.
But Woodson told a hearing of the Defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday that on a recent trip to Afghanistan he took along a bunch of IT specialists to help resolve the problem.
Maybe next year. Meanwhile, as I have reported in our "Broken Warrior" series, more than 213,000 troops are taking some kind of prescription anti-depressant or psychotropic drug.
Bob Brewin
Bob Brewin joined Government Executive in April 2007, bringing with him more than 20 years of experience as a journalist focusing on defense issues and technology. Bob covers the world of defense and information technology for Nextgov, and is the author of the “What’s Brewin” blog.
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