The Department of Veterans Affairs and numerous other organizations could benefit from a program to facilitate open-source software development for VA's VistA electronic health record system, according to a report by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Modern Healthcare reports.

To meet the challenges of research and development, the pharmaceutical industry must adopt more open source innovation—a concept that has been used for nearly three decades by the information technology sector—to promote innovation in the drug discovery process and boost bottom lines, according to a new report by Frost & Sullivan.

The Department of Health and Human Services said it will make available up to $335 million in Expanded Services grants for community health centers to boost access to preventive and primary healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act grant program is the second of two major initiatives announced this month totaling more than $1 billion for community health centers. On Oct. 11, HHS said it would provide $727 million to 143 community health centers across the country for construction, expansion, and renovation projects.

A few months ago, I wondered: Can open source create better prosthetics? I've been meaning to revisit the topic and see what kind of progress the project is making.  The Open Prosthetics Project (OPP) is now more organized and primed to foster worldwide collaboration for their efforts.

The modernization and repurposing of VistA for both the government and private sectors makes sound financial and clinical sense, and perhaps especially so today given the realities of the economic environment.  Building on VistA's legacy in the ways suggested in these comments offers the opportunity to continue to improve health care for veterans as well as to substantially and affordably improve health care for millions of other Americans.

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While I am proud of the accomplishments of the VA IT organization over the last 16 months, I also recognize that much, much more work remains to be done.  As the only Department-level consolidated IT organization, I believe that VA IT must strive to be a leader both inside and outside of government.  To that end, I would tell you what my goals are for us in the coming years:

4. Create an Open Source model for the VistA electronic health record system, bringing back the innovation that made VistA the best electronic health record system in the country.

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I was pleased to get a very thorough and thoughtful software engineering assessment of the VistA system by James D. Herbsleb,   Claudia Müller-Birn, and  W. Ben Towne of the Institute for Software Research School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University.

It is encouraging to see such a thorough study of the issues relating to the future of VistA.  Here is the original report. and here are my comments interspersed in it.  This comes on the heels of the Industry Advisory Council Vista Report advocating an open source future for VistA.

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I started reading about the Open Prosthetics Project whose  goal is to produce useful innovations in the field of prosthetics. The project team freely shares  the designs they come up with to make progress in prosthetics. The old way of creating prosthetics wasn't working. Patenting the designs and waiting for lackluster insurance coverage or government-funded research to make advancements haven't worked in the past. Using an open source approach changes the game. Sharing the design with more users and other designers is creating momentum. 

If you are interested in Free/Libre Open Source Software in health care please consider joining us at the 2nd FLOSS in health care track at Med-e-Tel 2011, 6-8 April, Luxembourg. IF you are using or developing open source in health care systems, please consider presenting your work at the conference.

As the Veterans Affairs Department sorts through responses to a request for information on the viability of open source software as a component of the VistA electronic health record architecture, it's also making clear that the MUMPS programing language will continue to underpin VistA in the near term.