People talk about EHR, and EMR as though these things always mean the same things. Generally what qualifies as an EHR varies greatly. When you say the word “car” do you include trucks? trucks with 18 wheels? tanks? airplanes when they are on the ground? boats with wheels? The frustrating thing about both the word […]
Category: VistA
VA VistA is not “Old”
Recently ComputerWorld released an otherwise good article entitled: Old code proves key to modern IT at Midland Memorial Hospital. The first paragraph reads in part: For Midland Memorial Hospital, this came in the form of 1970s-era code unearthed via the Freedom of Information Act. This is really frustrating. VistA is old. But it is not […]
Medsphere Growing in the right direction?
An important part of the reason why (some) people respect what I have to say with regards to FOSS Healthcare IT is that I do not pull punches. I also do not hesitate to admit when I am wrong. Recently, Mike Doyle from Medsphere called me. I have a lot of respect for Mike, just […]
Peter Bodtke taking a VistA tour
Peter Bodtke, the current vice president of WorldVistA, is doing a VistA tour. He is planning on touring Central and South America to raise awareness for VistA. Maybe they should make a shirt that says “It was an EHR before it was an Operating System”. They might be able to find a more pithy wording. […]
The Holy Grail
VistA is a robust and complete EHR system, but it relies on MUMPS. This makes VistA extremely expensive to configure and maintain. The open source web-based EHR systems are easy to deploy but have underwhelming feature sets. The holy grail of open source Health Informatics is a web-based CPRS (CPRS is the frontend for VistA). […]
Meeting Mike Doyle
Apparently, the people at Medsphere still read my posts. Mike Doyle noticed my comment that I had not meet him in my last post, and he made an appointment to have a phone call with me. I just got off the phone with him and… I was impressed. He seemed willing to reach out to […]
Medsphere advocates for the community. Bravo!!
I have been impressed lately with “the new team” at Medsphere. I have interacted with COO Rick Jung and CMO Dr. Edmund Billings. (I am disappointed that Mike Doyle and I have not met, but he is respected by some whom I respect.) I am happy to see that Medsphere has finally taken a stand […]
What do about the VA crisis: the aboveground railroad
Dana has just written a new article Why are reformers destroying Veterans’ health computer system. It focuses on the disastrous centralization movement within the VA. Specifically it references Roger Maduro’s impeccably researched editorial in the Jan 2008 edition of Vista News which Roger edits. Roger and I tend to see this issue in the same […]
Defending VA-VistA
I was heavily quoted in a recent article in Government Health IT entitled VA’s health IT gamble. In it, I present the case that the current IT centralization efforts within the VA are damaging to VistA and therefore the VA’s ability to deliver quality care. From the article: “Historically, each hospital hired programmers to solve […]
Why is VistA good? the VistA open source development model
Recently, VA VistA has been getting a tremendous amount of attention. Lets take a look at the recent events that highlight what VistA is and why it is important. Mexico decides to implement VistA in many of its state run hospitals. Medsphere gambles investment dollars on the idea that VistA can be used in private […]