FYI, You may be interested to know that the US Veterans Administration has just recently released this RFI on migrating their VISTA technology towards "an openly architected, modular and standards based platform" via an open source model.
From my perspective this move must have significance to the openEHR community. Thoughts please.. http://www.openehr.org/wiki/download/attachments/6553716/RFI-OpenSourceOrganizationForVistA-VA118-11-RI-0194-000.pdf (I have cut and pasted some key elements from the document) ########### "Goals VA believes that the most reliable, most cost effective, and ? based on experience ? quickest mechanism to re-position this tremendous national asset and to keep pace with innovation is to create a custodial agent based on well-understood open source business models. By doing so, we will provide a transparent mechanism to incorporate new features and capabilities into the source code, provide industry a high fidelity signal of our intentions and uniform acceptance criteria, and better proliferate those innovations inside our hospitals and clinics. Our intention is to create a structured, deliberate, and predictable migration path from our custom and proprietary EHR software to an openly architected, modular, and standards-based platform. We believe that a non-governmental custodian will achieve all these objectives quickly and efficiently. The rationale for these expectations is discussed below. Accelerated Rate of Innovation VistA?s capabilities evolved endogenously over the many years it has been in successful production, and are the result of the contributions of many innovations, including those that came from within VA itself. However, today?s health care environment ? in which new models of care are continuously developed and deployed ? is utterly dependent upon the accelerating technological development of new medical devices, improved IT infrastructure, services, and wireless communications. In order to sensibly benefit from these advances, VA must address fundamental structural constraints that will inhibit its ability to keep pace with health services delivery. Specifically, VA believes that a structured, deliberate, and predictable migration from our custom and proprietary EHR software to an openly architected, modular, and standards-based platform will achieve four crucial objectives: 1) It will unleash EHR innovation inside and outside VA. 2) It will release VA?s captive dependency on any particular component or service and give our clinicians access to the best available tools and solutions. 3) It will reduce the costs and risks of reliable implementation (and integration) of new functional modules that improve VistA?s capabilities. 4) It will measurably improve health outcomes for our nation?s Veterans. 5) It will enable other providers in the public and private health care system to benefit from, contribute to, and interoperate with this national asset." ########### Regards Tony Dr. Tony Shannon Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Clinical Lead for Informatics, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Chair, Clinical Review Board, openEHR Foundation +44.789.988 5068 tony.shannon at nhs.net ******************************************************************************************************************** This message may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please inform the sender that you have received the message in error before deleting it. Please do not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in reliance on its contents: to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Thank you for your co-operation. NHSmail is the secure email and directory service available for all NHS staff in England and Scotland NHSmail is approved for exchanging patient data and other sensitive information with NHSmail and GSi recipients NHSmail provides an email address for your career in the NHS and can be accessed anywhere For more information and to find out how you can switch, visit www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/nhsmail ********************************************************************************************************************
