VA Opening Up Its E-health Record

The Department of Veterans Affairs has taken a major step toward opening its electronic health record system to open source development. The Web portal, where collaborative development on the electronic health record system will take place officially launched last week, and developers who are interested in contributing to the project can start signing up.

"There was a lot of confetti and balloons around the office," said Roger Baker, VA's chief information officer, during a conference call with reporters last week. "This has been two years in the making, and it's huge." The only thing that's missing is the source code, itself, for the health record system, which is known as VistA and is used in 153 VA hospitals and more than 800 community-based outpatient clinics nationwide...