US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

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Sequencing, cloud computing, and analytics meet around genetics and pharma Bio-IT World Shows What is Possible and What Is Being Accomplished

Bio-IT World shows what is possible and what is being accomplished...last week I took the subway downtown and crossed the two wind- and rain-whipped bridges that the city of Boston built to connect to the World Trade Center. I mingled for a day with attendees and exhibitors to find what data-related challenges they’re facing and what the latest solutions are. Here are some of the major themes I turned up...

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Sorry VistA, DoD's health record won't be open source

Molly Bernhart Walker | FierceGovernmentIT | February 25, 2015

The Defense Department's next electronic health record will not be based on the open source architecture that supports the Veterans Affairs Department's EHR. A change to the Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization solicitation narrowed down the field of contractors vying for the $11 billion program – eliminating the only proposed solution built on the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA.

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South Africa’s Areta Health Selects Medsphere Healthcare IT Solutions

Press Release | Medsphere, Areta Health | September 20, 2017

Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare information technology (IT) solutions and services, today announced that the company has reached an agreement with South Africa’s Areta Health for comprehensive support of the organization’s hospital network. The contract covers Areta Health’s Specialist Day Hospital (SDH) system spread throughout South Africa. The hospitals, in turn, anchor an integrated health network with remote clinics and in-home monitoring that allow patients to heal at home without sacrificing attentive care...

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Standards and Open Source Make Advances in Apps and Data Exchange for Health

I try to be optimistic about health care, and I managed to move my mood meter in that direction last month after talking about advances in data sharing, standards, and interoperability with a few people involved in the open FHIR standard: Grahame Grieve from the Core FHIR Development Team, David Hay from the FHIR Management Group, and Josh Mandel, a research scientist working on the open-source SMART Platform. Read More »

State University of New York at Albany Launches VistA EHR Studies Program

The Albany Campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) has launched a new VistA EHR Studies program—the most comprehensive one of its kind in the United States. The program, which began on March 24, provides students the basis to learn and manage VistA’s fast-growing open source electronic health record (EHR) system. The decision to launch the full program follows a successful pilot course taught at the university this past fall. Read More »

Strange Sales Tactic: Oracle Blasts Defense-VA on Use of Open Source Software

Bob Brewin | NextGov | October 16, 2013

Oracle Corp. put out a 19-page white paper last month that pilloried the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments for thinking open source software can save money...The white paper zeroed in on the now aborted effort to develop a Defense-VA integrated electronic health record as a prime example of the billions that can be wasted on an open source project – even though the Pentagon has historically resisted using VA’s...VistA system. Read More »

The HITECH Era in Retrospect

John D. Halamka, M.D. and Micky Tripathi, Ph.D. | The New England Journal of Medicine | September 7, 2017

At a high level, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 accomplished something miraculous: the vast majority of U.S. hospitals and physicians are now active users of electronic health record (EHR) systems. No other sector of the U.S. economy of similar size (one sixth of the gross domestic product) and complexity (more than 5000 hospitals and more than 500,000 physicians) has undergone such rapid computerization...

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The Tragedy Of Electronic Medical Records

J.K. Wall | IBJ.com | October 23, 2014

...Digitizing medical records was supposed to transform health care—improving the quality of care and the service provided to patients while helping cut out unnecessary costs...But lately, electronic medical record systems are getting nothing but votes of no-confidence from physicians, hospitals, insurers and IT experts...

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The VA Waitlist Fiasco: VistA Should Not be Thrown Out With the Bathwater

Without a doubt, the death of American veterans as a result of the VA waitlist debacle is tragic and unacceptable. The Obama administration must move quickly and deliberately to fix the underlying problems and restore faith in the agency. If these issues were common throughout the VA network of hospitals and clinics, it might make sense to consider dramatic, earth-shaking alternatives like moving veterans to private providers and shuttering the VA. But they are not common. Indeed, as Washington Monthly reporter Phillip Longman has documented, the VA’s challenges are regional, not pervasive. Read More »

Theresa Cullen to co-lead Regenstrief's transformational Global Health Informatics Program

Press Release | Regenstrief | October 16, 2015

Theresa Cullen, M.D., M.S., an internationally respected leader in health information technology and its application in resource-limited environments, has been named associate director of the Regenstrief Institute's Global Health Informatics Program. She joins the institute's Center for Biomedical Informatics as an investigator following three-and-a-half years as chief medical informatics officer and director of health informatics at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Three Possible Measures for Quality Medical Care May Help Cut Deaths from Opioid Addiction by One-Third

Press Release | RAND Corporation | June 27, 2017

Following three possible recommendations in providing medical care to people with an opioid addiction may cut deaths among such patients by as much as one-third, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Analyzing the care given to people treated in the Veterans Affairs health care system, researchers looked at whether receiving recommended medical care was associated with a lower risk of death. They found that deaths were much lower among patients with opioid addiction who were not prescribed opioids or common types of anxiety medications, those who received psychosocial counseling, and patients who had quarterly visits with a physician...

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Transforming Health Care Through A 360-Degree View Of Data

How medical care can be substantially improved through a full spectrum view of all factors that affect health was the topic of Payam Etminani's presentation at the 2019 IDGA Veterans Benefits Conference in Washington D.C. Etminani, the CEO of Bitscopic, argued that the ability to view all health data including social, environmental and genomic information in addition to the traditional clinical measures (vital signs, blood work, history of illness etc), would lead to significant improvement in care. Etminani described how recent advances in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) make combining and using these large and widely varied sets of information possible. Read More »

Trump Says VA’s EHR Woes Are Finally Fixed. Not Quite

Evan Sweeney | Fierce Healthcare | July 28, 2017

To hear the President of the United States tell it, the Department of Veterans Affairs' frequently maligned EHR system has been fixed in just a few short weeks. During a speech on Tuesday in Ohio, President Donald Trump praised the work of Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin in reforming the agency responsible for providing medical care to the nation’s veterans. He specifically underscored the efforts his administration has taken to improve the VA’s EHR system...

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U.S. Trying to Find More Doctors to Send to Disaster Areas

Melanie Evans | The Wall Street Journal | October 14, 2017

A U.S. government program that sends doctors and nurses to disaster zones says it needs more health-care workers, as relief efforts during this hurricane season are near the end of a second month with no end in sight in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The National Disaster Medical System, which recently wrapped up big deployments to hurricane-ravaged areas in Texas and Florida, says it will start recruiting more medical professionals in the next few weeks...

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U.S., U.K. to collaborate on health IT, data projects

Joe Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 24, 2014

HHS and health authorities in the United Kingdom agreed to collaborate on a broad scope of health information technology and health data projects and practices. Read More »