Open source tools, OSEHRA gain momentum at VA

WASHINGTON – Open source software is catching on and taking a bigger role in solving health system challenges and to accelerate innovation in the VistA electronic health record system at the Veterans Affairs Department. VA just initiated a competition for developers and vendors to come up with tools for veterans to schedule medical appointments, and it is giving preference to an open source solution, according to VA CIO Roger Baker.

The benefit for VA in conducting a contest instead of using federal procurement is that the vendor takes the risk for the software’s performance and not the agency, he said at the Oct. 17 conference of the year-old Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA), a non-profit organization formed to modernize VistA for open source and to contribute to the VA-Defense Department’s integrated electronic health record (iEHR).ion here. We will know what we are getting,” Baker told Government Health IT in comments after his presentation...

Todd Park, the White House chief technology officer, spoke briefly at the conference and said that, like the ecosystem of apps growing around the Blue Button feature, developed originally at VA, so patients can access their health information in a simple format, “OSEHRA is catalyzing another ecosystem for open source software and health IT innovation that no closed system could do," Park said. "This is unbelievably cool."...