Updated 03/06/07: VIPIS report. Live from the 1st WorldVistA Education Conference and Seminar at Robert Morris University near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is a 3 day education event being put on by worldvista.org Highlights so far, Peter Bodke just demonstrated his VistA demonstration appliance version 1.0 that is available on Sourceforge. This has both the client and server available on a Windows machine via virtualization. This is so far not intended to be a production system but it has all the configuration details done out of the box. More information about the conference as it occurs.

Nancy Anthracite on the Hardhats groups writes: ‘…I have the translated CPRS from David Fonseca Sanchez . He said that since he does not have a medical background, he would appreciate feedback on the translation as well as how well it works. You can download it from two places at the moment [here and here]. Eventually it will be only on the second server.’

Modern Healthcare Online has an in-depth article on VistA and VOE: ‘…Next month, WorldVistA plans to submit to the federally funded Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology its VistA Office Electronic Health Record for testing and, if all goes well, certification. The submission will be a milestone in the life of the project begun in 2004 by the VA and the CMS. The goal of the project is to make EHRs more affordable to physicians in solo practice and small groups, where EHR adoption remains persistently low and where the real-dollar incomes of many primary-care physicians has shrunk during the decade.

VistA was a natural choice by the CMS for two reasons. It is in use at more than 800 outpatient facilities across the VA, and the VistA software is in the public domain, thus it is available from the VA without charge under the Freedom of Information Act…’

Government leader has an article with much praise for the Veterans Affairs VistA EMR and its grass roots approach to software: ‘…Destination VistA. The VA program �is a model for modern health management,� said Stephen Shortell, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley. �It is where the rest of the U.S health system needs to go in terms of widespread use of electronic information technology.�

VA credits VistA with helping it achieve a number of goals, including lower costs, better care, fewer errors, fewer hospitalizations, and promotion of preventive care. Patients� waiting times have declined, and access to care has increased because of online availability of health information…’

So whats the big deal anyway? I argue over on GPLMedicine.org that developing proprietary versions of VistA is both unethical and foolish. I would love to hear any
responses.

The latest VistA News is out: ‘We report on several major developments in this issue of VistA(r) News. These range from a public call by the Senate for the Department of Defense (DoD) to adopt the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VistA(r) EHR software to a major breakthrough in recognition for VistA(r) in the open source community’s LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco…’

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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