Thousands of medical personnel at Veterans Affairs will soon have access to government-provided collaboration tools, NextGov reports. The VA wants to develop software to head off the use of unsecured web-based applications tools, such as Yahoo calendar and Google Docs. VA health providers have been using those apps to store and organize sometimes sensitive patient information.

Va has issued a request for information for commercial collaboration tools hosted in a cloud computing environment to provide access to all 134,000 of its medical personnel. The cloud must be in the U.S.

VA Chief Information Office Roger Baker said VA needs to keep up with tech-savvy doctors and provide these tools to head off data breaches.

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