US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

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Which Bionic Limb to Prescribe? VA's Gait Lab Aims to Build Evidence-Based High-Tech Prosthetics

Prosthetics has come a long way—witness the $35,000 computerized knee that sits on a table in Maikos' Gait and Motion Analysis Lab, coupled with a $30,000 bionic foot. The high-tech components are awaiting testing with Veteran amputees who come to the lab. Some have lost a leg to an IED or rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq or Afghanistan—or perhaps to a mine or mortar blast decades ago in Vietnam. Others have lost a foot or leg in an accident, or to diabetes or vascular disease. The purpose of the tests is twofold: to help determine the best prescription for the Veterans, and to gather research data. Along with gait abnormalities, Maikos studies functional outcomes such as walking speed and distance.

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While Waiting for a State Health-Records Exchange, Medical Society Launches One

Julia Werth | The CT Mirror | August 18, 2017

Electronic medical records have become common, but the ability to share them easily between providers still lags. Frustrated that after 10 years of effort the state of Connecticut has yet to launch a functioning health information exchange (HIE) allowing physicians, hospitals and other health care providers to share patient medical records, the Connecticut Medical Society is offering one of its own. Available to all clinicians in the state and called CTHealthLink, it is based on a system currently used in Kansas...

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Why Computerized Medical Records Are Bad for Both You and Your Doctor

Samuel Shem | Newsweek | November 1, 2019

We should not click for cash, but for care. We can use the data to benefit the patient-and the medical professionals...The EMR could have been a lifesaver. It still can be. If we get rid of on-screen, for-profit billing, and use electronic screens exclusively for care, we solve a lot of problems. We could create a true national health care system, modeled after our existing two national systems-Medicare/Medicaid and the VA. As in all other national systems, each procedure would cost about the same all over the country. On longitudinal charts showing the health of Americans as they age, a sharp rise in good health suddenly increases at age 65, when Medicare kicks in. Read More »

Will Va Secretary McDonald Go Back To P&G For His CIO?

Bob Brewin | NextGov | August 1, 2014

Robert McDonald, the former Procter & Gamble CEO and secretary of Veterans Affairs since Wednesday afternoon, may enlist Filippo Passerini, the P&G chief information officer, as VA CIO, according to medium-strength signals I’ve picked up. The VA CIO slot has been empty since February 2013, when Roger Baker resigned. Read More »

Wisconsin reps trying to torpedo VA's open source strategy

For those of you folks who think that open health is a staid field, this week saw the unfolding of an epic scandal. NexGov's inimitable reporter, Bob Brewin, author of the column What's Brewin, got his hands on a stash of documents showing that elected representatives from Wisconsin are trying to torpedo the open source strategy being pursued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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Workshop Lays Out Strategy for Common VistA Code Base

Who Says a Common VistA Code Base is Unattainable? Certainly not the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA), nor 27 principal developers of VistA who participated in the first OSEHRA Code Alignment Workshop held in Oakland, California, last week. An unprecedented effort, the workshop brought together government and private organizations dedicated to open source solutions for the challenges facing healthcare. Its primary objective was to facilitate rapid innovation for the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), the electronic health record (EHR) software used by Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities as well as hundreds of medical centers in the U.S. and abroad, totaling approximately 2,500 facilities worldwide. Read More »

Mike O'Neill and Seong K. Mun on OSEHRA - The VistA Open Source Custodial Agent

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
March 1, 2012 - 4:00pm - 5:00pm

Those interested in finding out more about OSEHRA, the VistA Custodial Agent organization, will have a golden opportunity on March 1. Mike O'Neill - Senior Advisor, Veterans Affairs Innovation Initiative (VAi2) and OSEHRA Board Member and Dr. Seong K. Mun, founding President of CEO of OSEHRA will be giving a webinar presentation and detailed discussion on OSEHRA's background, mission and current status.

OSEHRA’s mission is to facilitate, through the use of the best practices in open source software development, the improvement and maintenance of EHR information systems.  These systems will be freely available for all medical beneficiaries. OSEHRA has been modeled after successful open source collaborative efforts and will welcome the contributions from all kinds of developers...

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OSEHRA 2012 Open Source Summit

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
October 17, 2012 - 8:00am - October 18, 2012 - 6:00pm
Location: 
Gaylord National Washington, DC
United States

The Open Source Electronic Health Records Agent (OSEHRA) will be hosting its First Annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop October 17 and 18, 2012, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. OSEHRA is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating an open source ecosystem around the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) world-class EHR, VistA. Since its creation a year ago by the VA, the organization has grown rapidly and now has more than 1,000 members. Members include a large number of private companies that are engaged in implementing VistA private sector hospitals and clinics, as well as in the large number of foreign countries that are adopting VistA. These solution providers are also developing a whole range of  enhancements to the VistA core.

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29th VistA Community Meeting

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
June 2, 2014 - 8:00am - June 4, 2014 - 6:00pm
Location: 
George Mason University
United States

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. Among many key topics, the conference will feature leading-edge technologies to connect VistA and RPMS with the latest devices, from smartphones and tablets to the Internet of Things (IoT).

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Is Digitizing Healthcare Making It Less Safe?

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
July 1, 2014 - 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Join InformationWeek Radio on Tuesday, July 1, at 2:00 PM EST for a discussion with Scot M. Silverstein, M.D., a consultant and professor in the Drexel University informatics program who is a leading critic of the claims made for EHR systems and researches the pitfalls of the software and the way it is implemented. He blogs at Health Care Renewal as InformaticsMD. One of the issues he highlights is that there is no systemattic tracking of medical errors associated with functionality or usability issues of EHRs, making it hard to judge whether their net effect has been positive or negative. Yet there are troubling signs, in everything from academic studies to malpractice claims, that the risks of EHRs have been underestimated and the rush to implement these systems may be misguided. Read More »

30th VistA Community Meeting

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
January 16, 2015 (All day) - January 18, 2015 (All day)
Location: 
UC Davis School of Medicine Sacramento, CA
United States

The VistA community is holding its 30th VistA Community Meeting at the UC Davis Sacramento Campus January 16-18. The meeting is going to be addressed by a wide range of speakers, from current and former top officials of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Indian Health Service (IHS), to leading innovators for the Vista and RPMS EHRs. The goal of these meetings is to create a collaborative conference where VistA Community can network and collaborate, i.e., to share ideas and work, with the objective of moving VistA & the VistA community forward. UC Davis School of Medicine, is providing the facilities for the meeting.

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Wentz to Speak at OSEHRA's January Open Source Innovation Webinar

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
January 20, 2015 - 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: 
Webex event
United States

Robert Wentz, CEO of Oroville Hospital in Northern California, will discuss the financial factors that led the regional hospital to self-implement the open soruce VistA EHR, and and why every regional hospital in the United States should do the same thing. VistA was originally developed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and it is used by more than 1,800 VA medical facilities. 

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Federal Health IT (FHIT) Innovation Event & Awards

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
March 4, 2015 - 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: 
1776 DC - The Penthouse Washington, DC
United States

This event will be unlike any typical Federal government event. Held at 1776 DC, the premier startup incubator in DC, the first part of this event include a panel featuring three of the real leaders driving innovation across the Federal Health Space, with perspective from Military Health and VA to HHS. The second part of the evening will celebrate many of the most innovative programs and initiatives happening across the Federal Health IT (FHIT) space today as the FHIT Innovation awards are handed out. Winners will be selected by an evaluation panel that includes government, industry and the startup community. Finalists for the awards will be announced by February 18th. Read More »

Project Hilleman - Moving VistA Forward.

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
May 17, 2016 - 3:00pm - 4:00pm

What is "Project Hilleman"? The technical answer is: Project Hilleman is meaningful web services for refactoring VistA. The core principles are 1) decoupling the business rules from the data 2) performance 3) and easy-to-follow strategies and design patterns for refactoring legacy VistA code. The more interesting (and provocative) reply is that we at Bitscopic believe the VistA status quo isn't working and hasn't been for a while. Google "Congress VA VistA." It isn't hard to find evidence that many of our elected officials see VistA as a relic and are setting the stage for its replacement. It's happening no matter how much the VistA Community wants to believe otherwise.

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33rd VistA Community Meeting

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
May 23, 2016 (All day) - May 25, 2016 (All day)
Location: 
George Mason University
United States

The VistA community will be gathering at George Mason University (GMU) for the 33 VistA Community Meeting (VCM). Major topics of discussion at this conference will be the advances made by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in incorporating open source contributions to VistA and well as collaborating with the VistA community. Representatives from the Kingdom of Jordan will provide details of their national VistA deployment. There will also be presentations on new capabilities for VistA, the enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP), a new release of DSS Inc's vxVistA, and improvements to several toolsets including EWD, VistA js, and RxNorm.

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