Rob Tweed

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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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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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Been there, Done that, Doesn’t Work: Veterans Health Administration IT goes back in time

If you have an interest in the worlds of economics, healthcare or technology, here’s a story that’s emerged this month that is worth noting for the record books. In the US, amidst the chaos of the Trump administration, yet another mistake has been made this month. For the record, it is worth noting that the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) ended up with a contract for a large IT solution for the next 10 years worth about $10 billion as of May 2018. On the face of it that may appear to be unremarkable news: just another big expensive contract for an IT system. Yet there is a part sad/part silly dimension to it that is well worth flagging up at this point.

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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 »

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 »

Open Source Motion Controller Revolutionizes Human-Computer Interactions

The Leap Motion Controller is a step towards breaking down this barrier with motion control, using the original human interface: the hand. It’s a small USB peripheral that tracks your hands within an interaction zone of eight cubic feet. While the hardware is fairly simple—featuring three infrared lights and a pair of cameras—the software makes possible high-precision tracking with near-zero latency... Read More »

Oroville Hospital CEO Tells the Story of their Successful VistA EHR Self-Implementation at VistA Expo 2011

One of most exciting presentations at the VistaEXPO 2011 conference was given by Robert Wentz, Hospital Administrator and CEO of Oroville Hospital, a regional hospital in the beautiful mountains of Northern California. Oroville Hospital has achieved a whole series of milestones in close partnership with the VistA community. These range from a full implementation of VistA in the hospital and most of its 20 clinics, to the achievement of full meaningful use certification.

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Oroville Hospital’s Scheduler: a winning technology

On October 3rd, the winners of the US Dept of Veteran’s Affairs’ (VA) Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest were announced.  In second place was the OH Scheduler, which was the submission from Oroville Hospital in California.  I’d like to expand on their press release and provide some background to the technology that was used to develop their scheduler: it’s very much a case study of everything I’ve been talking about in my blog The EWD Files. As it happens, the OH Scheduler was first and foremost designed and developed for use at Oroville Hospital.  However, since their Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) is based on the VA’s VistA system, Oroville Hospital believed that it should also meet many of the key requirements of the VA and therefore submitted it as a contender for the VA’s competition. Read More »

OSEHRA 2014 Summit Shows the Future for Open Source EHR's— US Government IT Procurement

The recent 2014 OSEHRA Open Source Summit: Global Collaboration in Healthcare IT, held September 3-5 in Bethesda, MD, was a huge success and clearly marks a watershed moment for open source health information technology (HIT), as well as a transformation in the way that US government agencies procure technology. The Summit featured more than 120 speakers addressing 90 separate sessions over three days. According to Seong K. Mun, President and CEO of OSEHRA, “this Summit demonstrated solid growth in both the depth and breadth of the OSEHRA Community.” Read More »

OSEHRA 2014 Summit to Rock EHR World

The world of electronic health records (EHRs) is going to be rocked next month as the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) holds its third annual summit in Bethesda, Maryland. After four years of quietly building a organization to promote VistA and open source in healthcare, as well as a central host for the core VistA code, OSEHRA is now emerging as a major force in the world of EHRs. The conference has become a gathering place for not just the VistA community but for major health IT players in the federal government, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Indian Health Service (IHS), and major forces in the open health field. The three-day conference will feature more than 120 speakers addressing 90 separate sessions. Read More »

OSEHRA 2014: Modernizing the VistA GUI

As we approach the 2014 OSEHRA EHR Summit, the topics of EHR Usability and EHR web enablement have become major points of discussion. This article is a quick attempt to summarize one of the key developments in this area. Sidney Tarason from Astute Semantics has produced groundbreaking prototypes for VistA that could shape the modernization effort moving forward for not just VistA, but for all EHRs based on the polymorphic MUMPS database (about 95% of all electronic health record (EHR) systems in the United States). Read More »

OSEHRA 2014: Tweed, Rhodes and Timson Receive Awards During Open Source EHR Summit

Press Release | OSEHRA | September 18, 2014

The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA) announced today the recipients of the 2014 OSEHRA Awards presented at the widely-attended 2014 OSEHRA Open Source Summit. Three outstanding individuals were recognized by the OSEHRA community for their leadership and contributions to health information technology and innovative healthcare. Read More »

Overview of Open Source and VistA in the UK's NHS

There is much widely publicised interest from NHS England in encouraging the development and implementation of open-source software in the National Health System (NHS) with the debate raging in a number of forums, notably on EHI where this article and the comments it has generated are vital reading for anyone interested in this issue. This debate has been fueled by the availability of NHS England’s £260 million Technology Fund which is actively soliciting open source projects include bids to implement an NHS VistA... Read More »

Remote Seats available for HANDI’s SMART Platform & OpenEHR Meeting on July 11

Staff | SMART | July 10, 2012

HANDI–the Healthcare App Network for Development and Innovation–will host a meeting on the SMART platform and OpenEHR on Wednesday, July 11. This meeting will include expert presentation of the two technologies and an opportunity to explore their further use in the UK and/or possible collaboration at a global level.

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VistA Academy 2013 - Leading Linux Expert to Teach Classes for Open Source EHRs

Press Release | The Linux ETC Company | September 11, 2013

Crawford Rainwater, leading expert on the use of Linux as a platform for open source electronic health records (EHR) systems, will be teaching Linux Essentials and Beginning Linux Systems Administration courses during the upcoming VISTA Academy 2013 in Seattle, WA, October 18-21. The VISTA Academy is part of an extensive VISTA Expo & Symposium 2013 conference focused on the award-winning VistA EHR developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
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