The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is examining whether to base its next-generation electronic health system on open-source software such as the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) system, Dr. Rob Kolodner, chief health informatics officer, said at last week’s Government Health IT conference.
But the Department of Veterans Affairs has indefinitely postponed today’s deadline for bids for a VistA re-engineering project, according to a June 8 notice to bidders on BuyIT.gov.
Open-source VistA code is available for download at the VA’s Web site. The Indian Health Service, the Lyndon B. Johnson Tropical Medical Center in American Samoa and the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs use the code.
VHA is considering whether the next-generation electronic health records system will also be available as open-source software, Kolodner said, adding that the agency has not made that policy decision yet.
The VA needs to replace VistA because VHA needs a system that users can easily search instead of sifting through VistA’s free text, Kolodner said. VistA consists of more than 100 applications running at 187 hospitals and more than 800 ambulatory care and community health facilities
VHA also wants to incorporate personal health records for the more than 5 million veterans who use VHA hospitals and clinics.
Dr. Stanley Saiki, director of Honolulu-based Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui, a partnership between the VA and the Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, said basing the next-generation system on open-source code would benefit VHA and other health care organizations.
The VA’s dominance in health information systems is based on an open model to which developers can contribute their knowledge and effort to the code base, Saiki said.
Open-source code systems stimulate innovation, Saiki said, and putting the code in the public domain will help public and private health organizations.
Although the VA needs a new electronic health care system, Kolodner said, VHA cannot afford to shut down VistA because of the patient load it handles. The agency will need to deploy a new system in phases.
That’s the approach identified in the now indefinitely delayed procurement for the VHA Health System Engineering Design and Development (HSEDD), designed to migrate VistA applications to the new HealtheVet architecture.
The VA delayed HealtheVet in April after a Carnegie Mellon University report indicated that the upgrade would cost $3.5 billion. The report also states that the project lacks a viable architecture or documented road map to get an operational system in place by 2010.
The HSEDD procurement, which was intended to be based on multiple blanket purchase agreements, had attracted a wide range of bidders, industry sources said.
These bidders, industry sources said, include EDS, InterSystems, Northrop Grumman and Science Applications International Corp.
One industry source said the department had postponed the HSEDD procurement because of the focus on the theft of VA records on 26.5 million veterans and more than 1 million active-duty personnel.
Kolodner said he could not talk about procurements.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
