OSEHRA

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OSEHRA 2012 Open Source EHR Summit Opens to Capacity Audience - Live Blog

The 1st Annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop opened to a capacity audience of nearly 400 participants today at the Gaylord National Conference center at National Harbor in Maryland today This is the conference held by Open Source Electronic Health Records Agent (OSEHRA) organization, the custodial agent of the code for the U.S Department of Veteran's Affairs' (VA) open source VistA EHR. The conference has a packed agenda with more that 30 speakers. We will be blogging live from the conference with a few bits and pieces and will follow up with a more extensive set of articles later on.

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28th VistA Community Meeting to Feature Top VistA Leaders

Former VA CIO Roger Baker, Oroville Hospital CEO Robert Wentz, and the VA's current CIO, Stephen Warren, will be addressing the 28th Vista Community Meeting (VCM) in Sacramento, CA in what promises to be one most important conferences of the VistA community to date. The conference, which takes place January 17-19 at the UC Davis School of Medicine campus in Sacramento, CA, will feature a stellar cast of Health IT leaders. In addition to Baker, Wentz, and Warren, keynote conference speakers include Dr. Seong Ki Mun, Chairman of OSEHRA, Howard Hays, CIO of the Indian Health Service (IHS), Theresa Cullen, Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Stephen Oxley, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Central Regional Hospital in North Carolina, and Denise LeFevre, CIO of Oroville Hospital.

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28th VistA Community Meeting: VistA Community Coming Together

Years of efforts dedicated to unifying the VistA community as well as VistA code development effort bore fruit during the 28th VistA Community Meeting (VCM) on January 17-19 in Sacramento, CA.  This year's conference became a transition to a closer collaboration between the VistA community, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the non-profit OSEHRA organization. In effect, the conference was more of a workshop where the participants briefed each other on the latest technical developments as well as strategic efforts to increase collaboration.

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29th VistA Community Meeting: Details of Upcoming Technical Conference

The upcoming 29th VistA Community Meeting (VCM), to take place June 2-4 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, is shaping up as a breakthrough gathering of technical experts on VistA and community members. The conference is bringing senior leaders from several US Federal Government agencies, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) together with technical leaders of the VistA community to collaborate on improving the VistA and RPMS EHRs.

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A Perspective of Open Source Licensing Models for the Health Care Industry

Recently, I've had several interesting conversations about how business models based on open source technologies apply to the healthcare industry. While a lot has been written on the subject, I aim to provide a concise summary and some of my personal perspectives on the matter. This article discusses the definition of open source technology and licensing models; a second article will discuss governance models and applications in healthcare...In reality, it's hard to talk about open source licensing without talking about intellectual property (IP) and copyright. Copyright sums up the rights and obligations that the rightful owner associates with the work. The license describes the rights and obligations of any and everyone else, and can be as broad or as limited as the owner chooses.

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AMA Call To Action On Health Records Should Tell Doctors To Heal Themselves

The American Medical Association (AMA) is one of the most powerful and well-known institutions in this country. Opposition from the AMA helped to bury hopes for universal healthcare back in the Harry Truman presidency, and now the AMA maintains a stranglehold on Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes and therefore on any innovation in reporting medical services. So when the AMA puts out a press release titled AMA Calls for Design Overhaul of Electronic Health Records to Improve Usability, describing the serious usability problems of EHRs, and announcing the release of their “solution” white paper titled Improving Care: Priorities to Improve Electronic Health Record Usability, headlines get made and policy-makers start to stir. Can a snap of the fingers by the AMA bring the EHR industry in line? Read More »

Can An Open Source Electronic Health Record Ever Be Ready For Prime-Time?

Zina Moukheiber | Forbes | August 29, 2012

In October, the Open Source Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) will hold its first summit, bringing together the government and open source developers, two radically different camps united in their goal to improve a lauded electronic health record in need of a face lift—the Veterans Affairs’ VistA. “We believe open source will help us innovate quickly,” says Mike O’Neill who sits on the board of OSEHRA, and is senior advisor to the Director, Veterans Affairs Innovation Initiative.

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College Students Tackle PTSD at First DC Hackathon

More than 50 college students from across the world gathered this previous weekend at HackDC 2015, the first Hackathon dedicated to crowdsourcing innovative ways to address the serious problem of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by creating mobile applications and solutions. The event, which started on Friday, went through Sunday afternoon. Held at the Richard J. Ernst Community Cultural Center in the Annandale Campus of the Northern Virginia Community Colleges (NVCC), HackDC 2015 provided the participants with access to food, sleeping facilities, and showers so that they could work straight through the weekend. 

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Congressman Roe Reintroduces Bill To Create Joint Military EHR System

On Tuesday, Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) reintroduced legislation that calls for the development of an integrated electronic health record system for members of the military and veterans, Politico's "Morning eHealth" reports (Allen et al., "Morning eHealth," Politico, 3/25)...According to WBIR, the bill would establish a temporary panel to create criteria for the EHR system, which would then be created by a U.S.-based vendor. The vendor would receive a lump sum of $50 million to develop the system, as well as $25 million annually over five years to operate the system. Roe said a joint military and veterans EHR system would help to streamline the transfer of medical records between DOD and VA. In addition, Roe said the system could help ease coordination of benefits claims and care.

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Department of Defense Makes EHR Software Free and Open

Staff Writer | Health.mil | May 22, 2012

A downloadable, open source version of the military’s electronic health record software that is used for troops on the battlefield will be available through the nonprofit organization, Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA). Read More »

Desereé Johnston

Desereé Johnston was the Director of Communications for the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record software and related technology.  Read More »

Disrupting Healthcare IT - The Easy Way to Develop a Beautiful and Usable EHR User Interface

Despite the best endeavors of the “mainstream” IT community, it’s an interesting fact that the top-end of the EHR marketplace is dominated by systems that use an otherwise little-known and poorly-understood database technology: Mumps.  Not only does this represent something of a closed book to the outside development community – they universally balk at the idea of having to use this technology’s native language, but also the companies that have developed and own these EHRs keep their technology tightly under their own control. Read More »

DoD, VA Will Use Service-Oriented Architecture in Joint EHR

Ken Terry | Fierce Health IT | October 17, 2011

The ever-evolving, contentious effort to merge the electronic health records of the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department just took another step forward. Mark Goodge, chief technology officer of the Military Health System, announced that the integrated electronic health record (iEHR) will use common services applications rather than a single proprietary system, accordin Read More »

DSS hands open source search tool over to OSEHRA

Mike Millard | Healthcare IT News | October 16, 2012

Document Storage Systems has released to the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent an open source tool that enables clinicians who use the VistA EHR to search a patient's record for free text data that might otherwise be scattered throughout the chart. Read More »

EWD.js and VistA: Now With No Barriers to Entry

Over the past few weeks I’ve been busy.  Before explaining what I’ve been busy doing, I’ll start by stating my sincere thanks to Christopher Edwards (KRM Associates and Certification Manager at OSEHRA) for enhancing and extending his installer for VistA to include an option to automatically install, configure and fire up EWD.js. Read More »