WorldVistA
See the following -
My Updated 2013 List of 'Open Source' Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
I've been following and reporting on 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) and/or electronic medical record (EMR) systems over the past decade. In the late 1990's and early years of the 21st century, there were several hundred open source EHR/EMR projects that were initiated and posted on sites like SourceForge, GitHub, GForge, Freshmeat, etc. Read More »
North Carolina's Central Regional Hospital Rolls Out VistA For Less Than $1 Million
Central Regional Hospital, a state psychiatric and medical facility located in Butner, North Carolina, has just completed a full-scale implementation of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system. The hospital, after three years of work, was able to self-implement and customize the fully-featured EHR at a cost of less than $1 million. The 398-bed hospital serves the acute and long-term inpatient mental health and medical needs of North Carolina citizens from 26 counties and employs more than 1,900 staff, including 50 doctors, 300 professional nurses, 700 nursing assistants, 40 psychologists, and 70 social workers. Central Regional Hospital is a major teaching site for 23 psychiatric residents per year from Duke University and the University of North Carolina medical schools. It also provides training for medical students from both schools as well as psychiatry subspecialty fellowship training. Read More »
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Open Source EHR Systems Deployed in South Dakota & Surrounding States
The acquisition, installation, and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across South Dakota and many other states across the U.S. See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in South Dakota and surrounding states. Read More »
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Open Source EHR Systems Implemented Across Oklahoma and Beyond
Slowly but surely, the installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have spread across Oklahoma and many other states across the U.S. See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Oklahoma. Read More »
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Open Source Electronic Health Records For Education And Training
In spite of being very involved in the field of Health Informatics I only recently became aware of VistA for Education (VFE), which has all of the aforementioned attributes of an excellent solution for EHR education purposes. VFE was developed as a result of a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to supplement the ONC Health Information Technology (HIT) curriculum. Electronic health records (EHRs) are more than just the electronic equivalent of paper-based health records. Electronic health data is easier to search, share and archive, compared to paper records. Additionally, EHRs can be embedded with clinical decision support to alert and remind physicians of patient safety and preventive medicine measures.
Open Source Electronic Health Records: A Cost Solution For Hospitals
When Oroville Hospital decided to digitize its patient medical records three years ago,...chief executive Robert Wentz...did something almost unheard of for a health care executive: he went open source. As the saying goes in this conservative industry, no one gets fired for picking Epic. Wentz’s decision is not for the squeamish or the straight-laced. It forced long-time hospital administrators with tight schedules and deadlines to loosen up and collaborate with a network of free agents—open source programmers who voluntarily support a publicly available electronic health record called VistA...
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Open Source Governance and the Rise of a New Open Health Movement
It's hard to tell if (or when) new open source foundations will appear and claim a leading role in healthcare. It would be interesting to see one created to scale an existing viable model, such as the one from Oroville Hospital using VistA. Or we could see OSEHRA shifting its focus and expanding its charter beyond just the US government space. Nevertheless, the successful foundation would keep a low barrier to entry for innovators, allowing them to incorporate and scale open source healthcare technologies into commercial products. Time will tell, but what's for certain is that we live in interesting times, and I am looking forward to massive innovation in healthcare in the near future. The time is ripe.
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Open source VistA System offers Major Benefits for Small Community & Critical Access Hospitals (CAH)
Almost one fifth of the U.S. population lives in a rural areas. Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) and other small, rural community hospitals provide vital services to over 60 million people living in these areas.Many of these small rural hospitals cannot afford to acquire and implement costly commercial EHR systems. There is an alternative - the high quality, low cost 'open source' VistA system supported by a growing number of health IT vendors. Read More »
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openMDWS: Transforming VistA Into An Open Source Service-Oriented Platform For Healthcare
...Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on this and wish to announce what I am calling openMDWS. openMDWS is designed to be a fully open source architecture that addresses all the issues I’ve described above. It is completely compatible with and interoperable with the VA’s MDWS initiative, but will allow MDWS services to be developed and used on both Caché and GT.M systems, without requiring any additional technologies... Read More »
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Oroville Hospital CEO Tells the Story of their Successful VistA EHR Self-Implementation at VistA Expo 2011
One of most exciting presentations at the VistaEXPO 2011 conference was given by Robert Wentz, Hospital Administrator and CEO of Oroville Hospital, a regional hospital in the beautiful mountains of Northern California. Oroville Hospital has achieved a whole series of milestones in close partnership with the VistA community. These range from a full implementation of VistA in the hospital and most of its 20 clinics, to the achievement of full meaningful use certification.
Oroville Hospital's CMO Discusses VistA Implementation and CPOE - Part 1
On October 16, 2012, Oroville Hospital turned on the CPOE component of its EHR, becoming the first individual US hospital to successfully adapt the Veterans’ Administration’s highly regarded electronic medical records system. How did a small, 153 bed semirural California hospital serving a mostly Medicare and MediCal population arrive at this place? Read More »
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Oroville Hospital's CMO Discusses VistA Implementation and CPOE - Part 2
This is the second in Dr Fine’s two-part series describing Oroville Hospital‘s implementation of VistA, the open-source EHR developed by the Veterans’ Administration. In his first post, he discussed their strategic approach and initial experiences with electronic documentation. Here, he picks up with Oroville Hospital’s CPOE go-live. Read More »
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OSEHRA 2017 Leadership Award Recipients Announced
The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) is pleased to announce this year’s OSEHRA Leadership Award winners. Numerous individuals were nominated this year and three were chosen through a vote by the OSEHRA community based on their outstanding achievements in health information technology and innovative health care. They were honored in a special ceremony during the 6th Annual OSEHRA Open Source Summit June 13-15, 2017 in Bethesda, MD...
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OSEHRA Community Responds to the VA's RFI for eHMP Agile Development Contract Strategy
In recent days, OSEHRA Community Members have enthusiastically collaborated to develop a response to VA’s Request for Information (RFI) for a contract strategy that is suitable for agile development of Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP). I would like to thank more than 50 members who contributed in developing the final document that OSEHRA submitted today on behalf of the community. Many members participated in community discussions, shared documents, and provided great ideas. We hope that our response accurately presents the depth and breath of expertise and commitment to excellence that has been shown by the OSEHRA Community.
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Petition to have DoD adopt the EHR used by the VA posted on the White House web site
Members of the WorldVistA organization have just posted a petition at the "We The People" White House website asking for President Barack Obama to instruct the Department of Defense (DoD) to quit dragging their feet and adopt the world-renowned electronic health record system (EHR) developed and successfully deployed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) over the past 35 years. Read More »
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