Open Source + Cloud: Strong Medicine

We spoke with Veterans Affairs' CIO Roger Baker and Deputy CIOPaul Tibbetts about plans for Veterans Affairs' VistA, the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record, and better integration with DOD's Military Health System. Baker says that VA is using its effort to open-source the VistA EHR system to create a more efficient IT architecture. VistA is already public domain software, but Tibbits says making it open-source will let small practices, community health clinics, state departments of health, and other organizations that can't afford commercial EHR software "defray the cost" of custom code. (And plenty of businesses might use an open-source VistA to create cloud EHR services, we think: Red Hat meets Red Cross.)