33rd VistA Community Meeting

The VistA community will be gathering at George Mason University (GMU) for the 33 VistA Community Meeting (VCM). Major topics of discussion at this conference will be the advances made by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in incorporating open source contributions to VistA and well as collaborating with the VistA community. Representatives from the Kingdom of Jordan will provide details of their national VistA deployment. There will also be presentations on new capabilities for VistA, the enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP), a new release of DSS Inc's vxVistA, and improvements to several tool sets including EWD, VistA js, and RxNorm.

The goal of VistA Community Meetings is for those involved in the VistA Community to network & collaborate, i.e., to share ideas and work, with the objective of moving VistA & the VistA community forward.

Compared to most meetings, VistA Community Meetings are relatively unstructured.  The agenda is always a "living" agenda, because attendees are free to change it – even during the meeting – in order to  better meet their objectives. VistA Community Meetings were originally almost exclusively technical meetings.  Over time, the balance shifted, so that although there are technical presentations, there are more discussions on other aspects, including implementation, support, demonstration, education, training, and community collaboration.

WorldVistA was formed to extend and collaboratively improve the VistA electronic health record and health information system for use outside of its original setting. The system was originally developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for use in its veterans hospitals, outpatient clinics, and nursing homes. WorldVistA has a number of development efforts aimed at adding new software modules such as pediatrics, obstetrics, and other functions not used in the veterans' healthcare setting.

WorldVistA seeks to help those who choose to adopt the VistA system to successfully master, install, and maintain the software for their own use. WorldVistA will strive to guide VistA adopters and programmers towards developing a community based on principles of open, collaborative, peer review software development and dissemination.

Speakers list

• Alan Montgomery, National Support, Reminders, VA
• Anthony Puleo, CPRS and Reminders Developer, VA
• Bob Calco, Apex Data Solutions, LLC Vista js
• Chris Richardson - VP WorldVistA
• Chris Rhodes, Director, Open Source Management, Strategic Investment Management (SIM), Office of Informatics & Analytics (OIA), Department of Veterans Affairs
• Dan Cramer, Terminology Analyst, Mantech Mission Solutions & Services Group
• Donna Ellis, Program Manager, Pharmacy Re-Engineering
• Eddie Brito - vxVistA Product and Portfolio Manager, DSS
• Fabian Lopez, Project Manager, DSS
• George Lilly, CIO WorldVistA and Director, VEN
• Guy Esten, *Director, Portfolio Management & Open Source Initiatives, Apex Data Solutions, LLC
• Jason Hawsey, CPRS Developer, Department of Veterans Affairs
• Keith Magoon - VIMM Project Manager, VA
• KS Bhaskar, FIS,  Development Director
• Lee Hirz, BA, BBA, MS - MUMPS, VistA, CPRS Developer
• Matthew King, Central Regional Hospital, North Carolina
• Nancy Van Ness, Translator, French Open Source Drug Database
• Olivier Bodenreider, MD, PhD, Chief of the Cognitive Science Branch, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine (NLM)
• P.J. Maddox, Professor and Chair Department of Health Admin. and Policy, George Mason University
• Ramie Al-Hamad, Support Software Manager, EHS, Jordan
• Ravi Shankar, PhD, MBA, PE, Professor and Director, CSI, Florida Atlantic University
• Richard D Boyce, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Faculty, Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing Faculty, Geriatric Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Gero-Informatics Research and Training Program, University of Pittsburgh
• Rob Tweed, M Gateway
• Ross Fletcher, Chief of Staff, Washington DC VA Medical Center
• Sam Habiel, Director of Technology, VistA Expertise Network
• Seong Ki Mun, PhD, President & CEO, OSEHRA
• Shane McNamee MD, Director, Development Section, Health Solutions Management, OIA, Veterans Health Administration
• Stephen Oxley, MD, CMO Central Regional Hospital, North Carolina
• Wasim Naffar, Technical Team Leader, EHS, Kingdom of Jordan