Health IT Strategist is reporting that a bill has been introduced to congress to unify the DOD and Veterans Affairs EMR/EHR software systems: ‘…Joseph Dal Molin – a director of the not-for-profit WorldVistA, which promotes the use of open source VistA software – said that if the DOD used VistA “[i]t would lower software costs for both organizations.” He added that if the DOD adopted the VA’s EHR architecture, both organizations would benefit from individual and joint development efforts…’

Very nicely done video on the Veterans Affairs hospital system VistA system can be found here. From the video: “VA is a leader in electronic health records…VHA patients received higher quality care…higher quality of overall, chronic disease and preventive care…”

ModernHealthcare (registration required) has covered the recent WorldVistA Conference. It covers the exciting things that Mexico is doing with VistA, as well as some new information on VOE.

This is a report on an excellent talk that I am hearing on the factors of success with VistA. The subject is the seven critical success with Medical Software. Essentially these are the lessons that VistA has learned via hard knocks. This list is partly compiled from those who have suceeded but mostly is the result of those who have failed with VistA.

Medical Informatics does not fit the standard software development cycle.

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According to this slashdot story: ‘”Remember how the VA was pinning the theft of 26.5 million veterans’ personal records on a hard working-but-renegade employee whose laptop was stolen? Surprise! It turns out that the employee had written permission to bring the sensitive data home. Fortunately, the laptop has been recovered. It is still unclear how the laptop was recovered, or if any of the veterans’ personal data was leaked.”‘ The best quote I heard is that databases like this one are becoming like plutonium, very concentrated and potentially very destructive in the wrong hands.

Joseph DalMolin writes on the Openhealth list: “WorldVistA is delighted to announce the 13th VistA Community Conference, to be held from Thursday, June 29th to Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The theme for this meeting is: �Building sustainable, global, collaborative development of VistA�, exploring the interrelated issues of:” Read on for more information. Calendar and registration information here.

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GT.M is a GNU GPL licensed MUMPS compiler capable of compiling the Veterans Administration VistA software. In a nutshell, this release has bug fixes and enables the use of gcc optimization flags for better performance. K.S. Bhaskar announced on the hardhats list: ‘GT.M V5.0-000D is available at Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm). This release provides timely fixes to several bugs, as noted in the release notes on the GT.M
user documentation page (http://www.sanchez-gtm.com/user_documentation/V5_0-000D_docset/GTM_V5.0-000D_Release_Notes.html).’

In addition to bug fixes, GT.M source code was modified to use ANSI C stdargs.h style of variable argument list parameter passing instead of the earlier K&R C varargs.h style. This change enabled the use of optimizer flags with the gcc C compiler, reducing CPU usage by GT.M applications on the x86 GNU/Linux platform. The change is internal to GT.M and has no functional or operational impact.

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While the article does not properly credit the actual authors of VistA or even mention the famous VistA Underground Railroad Fortune does have an article talking about how technology has improved the VA hospital system.

The effort within the Veterans Affairs hospitals to re-write in Java the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) client software is said to have been re-started. The project, known as CPRS-R, is to convert the VA’s graphic user interface client for clinicians from Borland’s Kylix to Java. The project had stalled for a lengthy period of time.

“The Pacific Telehealth & Technology Hui (�Hui�) announced the release of Hui OpenVista� Version 4.0, the first major release upgrade of the non-proprietary, open-source healthcare information system since its initial launch in June 2003…The most notable enhancement to Hui OpenVista 4.0 is a more streamlined installation process. Version 4.0 provides a preconfigured baseline system that simplifies the steps needed to convert the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) version of VistA to Hui OpenVista. This enables users to quickly download the baseline as a starting point for configuring the system to their specific requirements…” Read on for the complete announcement and link.

News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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