OSEHRA https://www.osehra.org just launched a new initiative to create an internationalized version of the VistA EHR system. Originally developed by the Veterans Administration, (VA), VistA has been periodically released to the public and enhanced by the OSEHRA community to create “OSEHA VistA, an open source resource for the entire EHR community.
“We are seeing substantial interest in open source EHR solutions from the international community”, said Seong K. Mun PhD, President and CEO for OSEHRA. “Technically, the ability to take true ownership of the system and create customized solutions is very attractive and the possibility of cloud-based collaboration and even cloud-based production is spiking international interest. Economically, high quality open source code and community collaboration can dramatically reduce both implementation and maintenance costs.”
So today, this internationalization project referred to as (Plan VI), aims to expand VistA capability by making it compatible with different languages and also to create a reference implementation for use worldwide.
International participants working together include South Korea (Pusan University; SooSangST Co., Inc., and Kyungpook National University), along with China (Harbin Institute of Technology), and the Kingdom of Jordan (Electronic Health Solutions) have already joined U.S members DSS, Inc., and YottaDB, LLC.
This international group will work on a VistA version capable of storing and displaying information in any language using Unicode. Development will consist of the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) interface, VistA’s internal Fileman/Roll and Scroll interface, and the HL7 data transfer standard.
Go to https://www.osehra.org/groups/vists-internationalization-project-group to join the VistA Internationalization Project group by visiting the Plan VI project page.