[ale] VistA (was OT: feel good about open source)

[Crawford Rainwater]

Actually, for some background here, VistA has been around for 20+ years
and has been "Open Sourced" from the go.  The VistA Community actually
had one of their meetings up in Norcross back in October (folks might
recall my company offering classes during that time in Atlanta; it was
to go with the folks attending this meeting).

For more details on the VistA Community, http://www.worldvista.org is
their web site.  To check out the software, it is on SourceForge.  Runs
on Linux using a Mumps compiler (or "M" for those programming geeks out
there) called Gt.M by Sanchez Corp (also Open Source).

Some other inside details are that VistA is active in quite a few VA and
non-VA medical facilities across the US and US Territories, as well as a
few foreign countries as well (Malaysis is one that I know of for
sure).  There are of course a few variants of it since it is open
source, but the community as a whole is a pretty good group and all
working towards the same goal of providing a solid and affordable health
care informatix system.

--- Crawford


Jim Philips wrote:
>
>This is a nice story. A group is proposing that an open source program
for 
>managing hospitals should be adopted by poor and developing nations so
they 
>can save money. The system, VISTA, was developed for our own Department
of 
>Veterans Affairs. It really makes me proud of the things open source
software 
>can do. Take that, Billy Gates!!
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3331739.stm
>