VA's IT chief announces plans to resign

Joe Conn | Modern Healthcare | February 19, 2013

Roger Baker, the man who steered the Veteran Affairs Department's healthcare information technology development program toward an open-source model, is resigning...

Baker received a standing ovation in 2011 when he met with members of a growing community of developers and users of an open-source version of the VA's VistA electronic health-record system and confirmed what had been previously announced, “that for good or bad, we're moving ahead with open source for the VA." On Baker’s watch, the VA launched the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent , or OSEHRA, to serve as the coordinator of the open-source project and as custodian of VistA software developed going forward.

Sad to see Baker go is Dr. Nancy Anthracite, president of WorldVistA, a not-for-profit organization promoting the use of an open-source version of VistA, which predates and operates independent of OSEHRA. “Prior to Roger Baker taking office, the interaction with the open-source VistA community consisted of the VA releasing its open-source code as a Freedom of Information Act release,” Anthracite said in an e-mail. Baker “understood the potential for huge benefit from a two-way exchange of code and open communication with the open-source community. We were astounded when he was successful in bring OSEHRA to life...