MUMPS to be Retained For VA VistA System -- For Now

MUMPS is here to stay as the computer language for the Veterans Affairs Department’s electronic health record system — at least for the immediate future, said Roger Baker, VA's assistant secretary for information and technology.

Addressing a longstanding debate, Baker said on Aug. 26 he favors preserving the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System computer language for the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) while officials pursue efforts to modernize VistA.

VistA was developed more than two decades ago in the MUMPS programming language and has since been expanded to cover millions of lines of computer code. MUMPS will remain at the core of VistA even as VA officials consider opportunities to modernize VistA through an open-source software development project, Baker told Federal Computer Week in an e-mailed statement.

“Maybe it’s because I have a background in computer languages, but I just don’t think MUMPS is much of an issue related to the open-source VistA discussion,” Baker said. “There are over 15 million lines of MUMPS code in VistA, so I just don’t see us deciding to recode all of that in another language right away,” he added.