VistA's Scarlet Letter: A Gartner Rating

An analyst firm's rating is one major obstacle standing between the Defense Department and the Veterans Affairs Department's Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture.

Despite the fact that Defense Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall said there's a one-in-five chance the DoD will select a VistA-based technology for its electronic health record, the odds of the department making such a selection are hurt by a 2011 Gartner report (.pdf) commissioned by the VA and obtained by FierceGovernmentIT.

The report assesses the maturity of VistA as a computer-based patient record using Gartner's 2007 criteria for the Enterprise CPR (reg. req.)--the same criteria noted in the DoD's request for information for its Medical Electronic DoD Integrated Core System.