SoylentNews

DVA Scraps Home Grown EHR Systems, Opts For OTS Replacement

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:18PM   
from the standardized-formats dept.

NotSanguine writes:

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) secretary David Shulkin announced a major overhaul of the department's Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems.

The department will scrap its in-house developed EHR systems, known as VistA in favor of MHS GENESIS, the EHR system in use by the U.S. Department of Defense.

MHS GENESIS is based on the Cerner Millenium API. For those of you who will ask, no, Cerner Millenium is *not* open source.

VistA, the current DVA system was originally conceived as a "paperless" health records management system in the early 1970s, developed and implemented by DVA and other government agencies, both in the United States and in a number of other countries including Finland, Egypt and Germany. VistA is in the public domain

So what say you, Soylentils? Does it make sense to throw out decades of development on a platform both widely used and in the public domain? Should the government be doing its own software development?

Are you a government contractor doing software development? If so, how might this and/or similar actions affect you?

Other Coverage:
White House press briefing/announcement from Secretary Shulkin
Healthcare IT News
Defense One [behind script wall]
Kansas City Star
FCW

---

Original Submission

• Interesting Article about VistA Interesting Article about VistA (Score: 5, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:21AM (2 children)

  by AnonTechie (2275) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:21AM (#521793) Journal

  Four decades ago, in 1977, a conspiracy began bubbling up from the basements of the vast network of hospitals belonging to the Veterans Administration. Across the country, software geeks and doctors were puzzling out how they could make medical care better with these new devices called personal computers. Working sometimes at night or in their spare time, they started to cobble together a system that helped doctors organize their prescriptions, their CAT scans and patient notes, and to share their experiences electronically to help improve care for veterans.

  Within a few years, this band of altruistic docs and nerds—they called themselves “The Hardhats,” and sometimes “the conspiracy”—had built something totally new, a system that would transform medicine. Today, the medical-data revolution is taken for granted, and electronic health records are a multibillion-dollar industry. Back then, the whole idea was a novelty, even a threat. The VA pioneers were years ahead of their time. Their project was innovative, entrepreneurial and public-spirited—all those things the government wasn’t supposed to be.

  Of course, the government tried to kill it.

  A 40-year 'conspiracy' at the VA [politico.com]

  --
  Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+4
  Insightful=1, Interesting=3, Total=4
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Interesting Article about VistA Re:Interesting Article about VistA (Score: 1) by rider_prider on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)

  by rider_prider (5146) on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:50PM (#522052)

  Important to note that nearly all 'modern' medical systems are based on the old MUMP's architecture, basically just closed source versions of the VA system. This is a lost opportunity for us all. If any system should be fully free and open source it's this.

  Parent

  • Re:Interesting Article about VistA (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:21PM (#522075)

    yep, spending tax dollars on closed source should be illegal as you are using the people's money on something they won't own and therefore won't fully benefit from, while simultaneously lining the pockets of the dev/dev company. if you can't spend everyone's money on something that will benefit everyone then you just can't have that money because your precious socialism isn't working for that particular situation. it's just like the school teacher who says that if you didn't bring a cookie for everyone then you can't eat cookies in class, wittingly/unwittingly teaching socialism/communism/some ism(i never read those books. so i only pick up little pieces of propaganda from all sides like most americans/the world?). this should be obvious but people think it's patriotic to buy from what should be considered national embarrassments(except for their biz skillz, which are quite l33t, i'm sure) like apple and ms.

    Parent