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Subject: RE: [ihc] VA drives open-source health records initiative
Interesting article – I have been
told however that the “Open Vista” “open” part is more
based on the fact that it is free and you can make changes inside your
organization – NOT that you can contribute code in the same way LINUX
works. Anyone hear anything different? Brett From: Ed Dodds
[mailto:dodds@e-dodds.com]
Twenty-year-old software developed by the Department of
Veterans Affairs could serve as the low-cost building block of a nationwide
electronic health care record (EHR) system President Bush wants officials to
deploy within the next decade, according to health management experts. This open-source software, based on the VA's Veterans Health
Information Systems Technology Architecture ( Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) want to use Capt. Cynthia Wark, a Public Health Service nurse who is the
acting deputy director of the information systems group at CMS' Office of
Clinical Standards and Quality, said agency officials are developing
Vista-Office to improve the quality of health care while promoting the adoption
of health care information technology by doctors' offices and clinics.
Officials are targeting Vista-Office to small medical offices that have one to
eight doctors. They have been slow to buy new technology because of its cost.
Wark estimated the software needed in a small doctors' office to cost between
$10,000 and $20,000. Vista-Office will provide doctors and clinicians with a
number of modules adopted from Mike Ginsburg, project manager for the Vista Office software
at the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care, a CMS contractor, said agency
officials will begin testing Vista-Office with small clinical practices next
month. CMS officials plan to make the software electronically available in July
2005 to the roughly 500,000 Vista-Office is available for free, but when officials
release the final version, doctors would have to pay a license fee to use the
underlying Caché programming language and database management systems from
InterSystems, based in Dr. Stan Saiki Jr., director of the joint Defense
Department/VA Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui (meaning partnership) at Instead of using MUMPS Caché, Saiki said, Hui OpenVista runs
on open-source MUMPS called Greystone Technology M from the Sanchez Computer
Associates division of Fidelity National Financial, in Saiki said Pacific Telehealth has had about 1,000 downloads
of Hui Open Vista software package from its Web site and envisions it serving
health care facilities worldwide. Pacific Telehealth developers have built an
application service provider prototype of Hui Open Vista, Saiki said. The
software is housed on central servers, relieving the need to hire an IT staff
to maintain an in-house EHR system. |
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