The next VistA Community Meeting will be held in Norcross, Georgia on Thursday, October 16 through Sunday October 19, 2003. The main meeting will be at The Royal (http://www.royalnorcross.com), with additional meeting space at the New City Hall (http://www.norcross-ga-gvt.com/Information/information_maps.asp). Complete details can be found here.

The latest Sanchez Computer Associates Free and Open Source MUMPS compiler, GT.M, is now available. The compiler can be used as the basis for a totally FOSS VistA electronic health record. Highlights of the compiler release include: ‘…the top level program (that which is called from the shell), no longer needs to be an M program — the outer level can also be a C main() function. Effective V4.4-002, M and C code can be intermixed in an application. The implications are significant — for example, it is now possible to use GT.M for dynamic web content scripting by directly calling M functions from a web or application server, instead of using a CGI interface…’ Text of the full announcement is within.

GT.M V4.4-002 and V4.4-FT01 are now available at Source Forge (x86
GNU/Linux only, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm) as well
as the Sanchez FTP site, if you have purchased support from Sanchez.

With V4.4-002 on UNIX/Linux, the M run-time system is now packaged as a
shared library (libgtmshr.so) and the mumps executable is merely a
wrapper that calls functions in the shared library (e.g., it is now just
15,833 bytes in size on Linux). The major new functionality that
results from this is that the top level program (that which is called
from the shell), no longer needs to be an M program — the outer level
can also be a C main() function. Effective V4.4-002, M and C code can
be intermixed in an application. The implications are significant —
for example, it is now possible to use GT.M for dynamic web content
scripting by directly calling M functions from a web or application
server, instead of using a CGI interface. There is a new technical
bulletin (TB5-027) on the call-in functionality.

V4.4-002 also brings a significant rewrite of the journaling and
recovery logic, enhancing both performance and robustness. In
particular, interrupted rollbacks and backward recoveries (e.g.,
recovery from a system that crashes while a recovery from a system crash
is in process) are now much better handled by simply repeating the
rollback or backward recovery command (previously, such a condition
could have required restoring a backup and using forward recovery). The
journaling chapter of the GT.M Administration and Operations Guide has
been rewritten, and is made available as a technical bulletin (TB5-029)
describing the new functionality.

In both the above, backward compatibility has been maintained, while
adding significant new functionality. The online help has been updated
to reflect the current user documentation. On x86 GNU/Linux, Red Hat 9
is also now supported.

Of course, there are a number of bug fixes. Details are in the
technical bulletin (TB5-028A). The error messages have been updated
(TB5-030).

GT.M V4.4-FT01 is a field test release based on V4.4-002 with two
additional changes on the Linux platform.

The first is that the maximum string size has been increased from 32KB
to 1MB.

The second is a bug fix: if the second argument of a Set $Piece is a
$Select, GT.M will give incorrect results. Certain versions of the
VistA source code work around this problem, but others don’t. If you
encounter otherwise unexplained errors with VistA (e.g., undefined
variables), see whether V4.4-FT01 makes the errors go away.

On platforms other than Linux — in particular, AIX, Tru64 UNIX and
OpenVMS, there are other significant enhancements that are a precursor
of forthcoming functionality on those platforms. Please contact Sanchez
if you are interested in these platforms.

Thank you for your continued interest in GT.M.

Regards
— Bhaskar

N.B. If all technical bulletins have not hit your download site as of
the time you receive this e-mail, please check back in 24 hours.

K.S. Bhaskar
VP, Database Products
Sanchez Computer Associates, Inc.
40 Valley Stream Parkway
Malvern, PA 19355, USA
+1 (610) 578-4265
k.bhaskar@sanchez.com
http://www.sanchez.com
http://www.sanchez-gtm.com

An article at amednews.com describes the “MyHealtheVet” program, which will allow Veterans Administration patients to view selected parts of their own electronic health records. My question is simple: is this based on VistA or is it based on another project?

The Pacific Telehealth & Technology Hui (Hui) is pleased to announce the release of OpenVista (TM). Based on the Department of Veterans Affairs robust CPRS-VistA� system made available to the public through FOIA, OpenVista is a fully integrated, enterprise-wide healthcare information system. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the largest, centrally directed, healthcare system in the U.S., has developed and used the CPRS-VistA system for more than 20 years. The Linux-based OpenVista application includes multiple components of the “core” CPRS-VistA system, including patient registration and tracking, scheduling, pharmacy,
laboratory and electronic medical record modules. Read on for further information.

Further information is available on SourceForge and the Hui website:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/openvista

https://sourceforge.net/projects/worldvista

http://www.pacifichui.org/OpenVista/

The OpenVista software and documentation can be downloaded from the Hui
website. Additional documentation and software will be uploaded to the Hui
website next week. Please register on the Hui website so that we can begin
to track statistics on the number of people using or evaluating OpenVista.

In the near future, there are plans to put the OpenVista software and
documentation into a version control system on SourceForge.

Paul Arinaga

Project Manager

Pacific Telehealth & Technology Hui

1 Jarrett White Road

Tripler AMC, Honolulu, Hawaii 96859-5000

tel: (808)433-6369

e-mail: Paul.Arinaga@med.va.gov

The VistA Community Meeting was held over the weekend. Sadly I was not able to attend. I dont know very much about the project, other than that it is really important. And it is getting closer and closer to the point where someone like myself could install and use it. Could somebody reply with a “journalist” dumbed down summary of what happend over the weekend?

Fred Trotter , The FreeMED Project

Joseph Dal Molin writes: The next meeting of The VistA Community will be June 5 – June 8, 2003
at the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Mather Air Force Base (in the Sacramento, California area.) Open to all who are interested in VistA.
For more details and free registration, go to the WorldVistA website — www.worldvista.org — click on the “Meetings” link.

VistA continues to be promoted as a foundation element in the National Healthcare Information Infrastructure. A recent public announcement from the Veterans Administration regarding the potential utilization of VistA as a means to establish a ubiquitous electronic health record will be of interest to the OpenVista Community. In addition, OpenVista 2.5 will soon be available to the community. Editor’s Note: OpenVistA is VistA with no proprietary elements needed to run it.

Today marks the 21st anniversary of the Veterans Administration DHCP/VistA, electronic medical record software. On February 18, 1982, Administrator Nimmo signed an executive order making it official. Read here for a complete history of the project. The software is available in the public domain at www.hardhats.org and is being used and supported in the private sector and several foreign countries. Thanks to KS Bhaskar for this link and comments.

So says Paul Ellwood, MD of the influential Jackson Hole Group regarding the Veterans Administration and its VistA clinical computing software. He advocates its use as general-purpose clinical computing software in this AMNews article. He urges: ‘…consider using the electronic medical records system of the Veterans Health Administration as a starting point…’ You can find out who the VistA players are including those who will support it for you here. Thanks to David Derauf for this link.

The MUMPS programming language, also known as M, was specifically designed for use in healthcare and has a long history. It is the basis for the Veterans Administration VistA software as well as many other commercial healthcare applications. Because of its unique properties, it is used in banking as well. Open source bindings to CORBA exist (see below) and a complete open source M compiler, GT.M, is available on Sourceforge. There is much activity surrounding M in healthcare, perhaps more now that there is a Free/Open Source M compiler available. Read on for links to books and resources for programming in M

The hardhats maintain a comprehensive web page of M links here. Thanks to Chuck Link for the pointer to this.

KS Bhaskar, recent recipient of the 2002 Linux Medical News Software achievement award writes: ‘A good book for M programming is: Walters, Richard F. M Programming: A Comprehensive Guide. Digital
Press, 1997. ISBN: 1555581676. In the US, Amazon lists it for $39.95 and claims to be able to ship it in 24 hours. An advanced online reference is Ed de Moel’s MUMPS By Example http://jacquardsystems.com/Examples, but don’t look to it as a tutorial.’

Alexander Caldwell of tk_family_practice writes: ‘The documents that come with GT.M from source forge are very good for installing it and getting an overview of how the database works, and how a system administrator would maintain it, but without something like this you won’t get far past just getting it installed: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7041/mwm999/mwm.html
start with the MWM001 link and look for the “teach you, teach me” link…

KS Bhaskar further writes: ‘There is plenty of M expertise Down Under, and there is even an
implementation of M developed in Australia that just went open source
(http://mumps.sourceforge.net)…Open source nuts and bolts for connecting to VistA with CORBA exist: esiobjects.sourceforge.net and while a binding to VistA has not been released yet, perhaps one will emerge in 2003…’