Click Read More for the full text of the announcement: “Honolulu based Blue Cliff, Inc. has been awarded two contracts to install and implement the VistA Electronic Medical Record System. The State of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) awarded a contract for the installation and implementation of Blue Cliff’s Open Source VistA (OS VistA) hospital information system at their Orofino, Blackfoot and Boise Idaho locations. The second contract was awarded by Lakeview Healthcare Systems, Inc. (LHS) for the implementation of Blue Cliff’s Vista Electronic Medical Record (Vista-EMR) information system at fourteen of its sites in five states, including the site of its joint venture with Virginia NeuroCare Services, Inc., Lakeview Virginia NeuroCare, L.L.C.. Virginia NeuroCare is a Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center Core Program in Charlottesville, Virginia serving military and civilians in multiple residential facilities and an outpatient rehabilitation clinic…”

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Rick Marshall has begun a VistA blog with some good prose:

‘…In the beginning it had no name. Amazingly, those who fought their David-and-Goliath battle to bring VISTA to the world merely described it rather than naming it, almost unthinkable in this era of branding urges so powerful we had to coin the term “vaporware” for our empty software names. Instead, the fathers of VISTA offered us abundant anonymity, a wealth of medical informatics with no name…’

According to this announcement, WorldVistA EHR/VOE 1.0 is now CCHIT certified. Formerly VistA Office EHR (VOE) there has been a name change due to entanglements. It is now known as WorldVistA EHR.

Phillip Longman’s Book ‘Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours’ is a narrative of the transformation of the Veterans Affairs hospital system from the worst in the nation to arguably the best in the world, becoming the ‘Toyota of Healthcare’. Longman attributes the VA’s success in large part to the VistA electronic health record system, application of quality metrics system wide made possible by VistA, and alignment of economic incentives. The author contrasts this with the private sector in which poor quality and disorganization are rewarded. He warns of the consequences of retaining the private sector status quo. He ends with a proposal for private sector change.

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David Whitten was the first to note to Linux Medical News that WorldVistA has won the 2007 Wired News Rave Award. This is in the latest print edition of Wired on page 147 featuring a picture of K.S. Bhaskar, Joseph Dal Molin and Maury Pepper. Bhaskar is quoted as saying “nothing short of world domination” regarding VistA. Shameless Linux Medical News plug: Bhaskar and Joseph Dal Molin are past recipients of the coveted Linux Medical News Freedom Award.

Blue Cliff, Inc. is announcing (PDF) VOE Readiness Training May 8-11, 2007 at the Manoa Innovation Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. ‘…Join the Blue Cliff trainers and get a jump start as they offer �hands-on� learning for
implementing VOE. Blue Cliff, Inc. has developed successful methods and support materials to
ensure VOE adopter success. The Blue Cliff team has over 80 years of proven experience,
successful implementations and satisfied clients…’

There’s a very positive article in the Washington Post on the Veterans Affairs VistA software: ‘…Since 1999, the VA’s 155 hospitals, 881 clinics, 135 nursing homes and 45 rehabilitation centers have been linked by a universal medical records network. It allows any authorized person to look at 5.3 million patients’ records — everything from a nurse’s note written during a hospital stay, to the result of a blood test drawn at a clinic visit, to the moving-picture film of a coronary angiogram done in a cardiology lab.

Even though President Bush has set a goal of 2014 for when most Americans should have their medical information stored electronically, the Department of Veterans Affairs is today one of the few health systems — and by far the largest — that is virtually paperless…’

A fairly detailed article entitled “VistA Electronic Health Record (EHR) System: The Market Today and Tomorrow” was recently published in Virtual Medical Worlds. See the article here.

Texas Tech University Medical School will deploy a version of VistA by Document Storage Systems, Inc. According to several news reports like this one: ‘The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine has begun deploying a public domain version of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ electronic health record (EHR) system developed by Document Storage Systems, according to the vendor…’ Some articles are saying that this is an open source deployment, however that may or may not be the case. The vendor, Document Storage Systems, is noted for being a proprietary vendor selling its own, not Free or Open Source Licensed, proprietary version of VistA. According to the article: ‘…The El Paso medical school, which is the company�s biggest non-VA job to date, will use the same core components of VistA as the VA does. The school also will use DSS-developed add-on modules to support departments not found in VA hospitals, such as pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology. DSS said it is also providing the school with an endocrinology software module…’

Blue Cliff, Inc. has announced the development of a non-proprietary open source laboratory interface to VistA-Office Electronic Health record system (VOE). Blue Cliff is a Hawaii-based software consultant and development company specializing in providing installation, configuration and customization support for VistA and its derivatives.

�There was a gap in the system, and we�ve filled it,� said Blue Cliff VistA Specialist Norman Dodd. �This new interface software provides the functionality required for ordering laboratory tests thru VOE and receiving electronic and paper based results from external lab services.� The Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) capabilities of VOE are enhanced to include the range of laboratory workflow scenarios encountered in primary care settings so all orders can be completed entirely within the clinical chart.

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