Announcing WorldVistA

Joseph Dalmolin has announced that: ‘…WorldVistA is a non-profit organization incorporated in California with the mission of furthering the cause of affordable health care
information technology worldwide.

Our current efforts are targeted to championing the use of VistA outside the VA [Veterans Administration]. Part of what we hope to achieve is to act as a coordination point for work on VistA done outside the VA, to ensure that all such software changes are available under an appropriate open-source license,
and to feed bug fixes and enhancements back to the VA for consideration
for inclusion in the VA’s VistA. Our goal is to help establish for VistA
the virtuous spiral of open source by bringing together a critical mass
of developers and users…’
The complete text of the announcement is within.

Over the last year, since the release of Sanchez GT.M on Linux, a community of VistA enthusiasts including members of the Hardhats, some of whom were involved in the original creation of VistA, representatives from IBM and HP (Compaq) and other supporters have been gathering on a regular basis to work together to port VistA to GT.M on industry standard x86 GNU Linux open source platform as well as HP Alpha/AXP Open VMS and IBM eServer iSeries (formerly AS/400) OS/400 PASE.

At the OSHCA 2001 meeting in London the idea of forming a not-for-profit organization that would act as the steward for full open-source implementation of VistA was introduced by Rick Marshall, Chris Richardson and K.S. Bhaskar, three members of this community. The original name for the organization “Health Care for Humanity” became WorldVistA and as we wrap up the latest in the series of development meetings, and given the latest discussion thread on VistA, it is both timely and synchronistic to announce the formal incorporation of WorldVistA.

WorldVistA is a non-profit organization incorporated in California with the mission of furthering the cause of affordable health care information technology worldwide.

Our current efforts are targeted to championing the use of VistA outside the VA. Part of what we hope to achieve is to act as a coordination point for work on VistA done outside the VA, to ensure that all such software changes are available under an appropriate open-source license, and to feed bug fixes and enhancements back to the VA for consideration for inclusion in the VA’s VistA. Our goal is to help establish for VistA the virtuous spiral of open source by bringing together a critical mass
of developers and users.

WorldVistA, will not sell services or engage in other revenue generating
project activities. Instead it will help coordinate and facilitate the
efforts of other organizations and individuals in meeting these needs.

We welcome and look forward to comments and suggestions from the broader
open-source health care community in helping WorldVistA evolve.

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