Data Object Exchange (DOEx) as a Method to Facilitate Intraorganizational Collaboration by Managed Data Sharing: Viewpoint.

Background: To help reduce expenses, shorten timelines, and improve the quality of final deliverables, the Veterans Health Administration (VA) and other health care systems promote sharing of expertise among informatics user groups. Traditional barriers to time-efficient sharing of expertise include difficulties in finding potential collaborators and availability of a mechanism to share expertise.

Objective: We aim to describe how the VA shares expertise among its informatics groups by describing a custom-built tool, the Data Object Exchange (DOEx), along with statistics on its usage.