VA Launches Open Source Approach For Electronic Health Record Modernization

The Veterans Affairs Department kicked off a project last Friday to modernize its decades-old electronic health record system with an open source model that it said will benefit both VA and private health care providers, including doctors and hospitals.

VA said the open source approach to modernization of its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, known as VistA, "will unleash EHR innovation inside and outside" the department and create a national asset that will benefit the entire health care market.

Industry sources said the collaborative approach toward development of the new VistA EHR also could spur development of a new single electronic health record to serve both VA and the Defense Department. Roger Baker,VA's chief information officer, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee last Thursday he expects the two departments to reach an agreement on a single electronic health record within two months.

Craig Newmark, founder of the online classified advertising business craigslist.org and a consultant to VA, called the open source approach a "really big deal, novel in government, which might also improve the health record systems we all use. This could become the basis of a jointly developed health records platform," he said in a blog post yesterday.

In its request for information, VA said the first stage in its project is development of an open source ecosystem, guided by a governing body called the custodial agent, which it said will most likely be a vendor.