NHS VistA – An Update

[Update with additional Links ahead of NHS England/Intellect workshop on 8 July]

There is growing support for the production of a NHS version of the VistA the US open source EPR used by the US Veterans Administration and more recently by a number of health systems outside of the US.

I’m a tremendous fan of what the VA have achieved and believe we have lots to learn from VistA, but on balance I don’t think producing an “NHS VistA” is a good thing. Most of my reasoning for this is laid out in my earlier blog  (if you have not read this read it firts),  in this I remain sitting on the fence and I now think it is time to come off firmly on the negative side and I want to explain why.

The NHS VA has achieved an amazing transformation from “basket case” to “best care anywhere”  VistA was a necessary but far from sufficient driver of this  transformation, which was down to truly inspirational leadership and a broader system redesign – Read Phillip Longman’s book “Best Care Anywhere”