VistA NHIN

From Ubuntu Doctors Guild

The VA and Kaiser Permanente are involved in a large project to exchange electronic medical records, as reported here.

The VA uses VistA, the largest electronic health record platform in the world. Kaiser Permanente uses EPIC, one of the few EHR's to achieve the highest level of HIMSS capabilities.

Both VistA and EPIC use versions of the MUMPS (or M) database engine, so that exchange of medical records is facilitated by this shared structure.

The open source NHIN Connect will be used as the conduit for information exchange, with the support of the NHIN. CDR Emory Fry of the Naval Health Research Center recently presented information about the Federal Health Architecture NHIN Adaptor used in this project.

WorldVistA is based on VistA, and CDR Fry indicated that once the VistA <--> EPIC exchange process is working well, it ought to be easy to exchange information between a hospital using WorldVistA and EPIC.

In addition to Kaiser, UC Davis and other University of California institutions use EPIC, and Sutter Health Systems in California has also considered EPIC.

EPIC is an expensive EHR, however, and is mainly suitable for very large medical centers. The prospect of health exchange between EPIC and VistA-derived EHRs (which are in the public-domain and inexpensive) therefore makes WorldVistA a very attractive alternative for budget-minded health institutions considering an EHR.