Group Recommends Upgrading VA Health System with Open Source

A blue-chip information technology industry recommended the Veterans Affairs Department reengineer its decade-old electronic health record system based on open source models and offered as the international standard for hospitals.  The recommendations have implications for the Obama administration's push for a national network for health records, which faces a roadblock of incompatible systems nationwide. Open source theoretically could provide a solution.

In October 2009, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker tapped the Industry Advisory Council, a 550-member group of technology companies in the Washington metropolitan area that fosters dialogue with federal agencies about IT solutions and procurement, to recommend how to modernize VA'saward-winning Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture and determine how it can be leveraged "for the betterment of the country."