VA Plans for an Open Source VistA

The Veterans Affairs Department envisions a moderated "open source ecosystem" forming around its electronic health record, known as VistA.

In a request for information released Feb. 18, the VA says open source will reverse what it says has been a slowing pace of VistA capabilities over the past few years.

"As open source communities such as Apache, Eclipse, and Mozilla have demonstrated, the open source model can lead to reliable, predictable, safe and robust software," the RFI states.