VA Vista (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) - Department of Defense Veterans Department Medical System; The largest medical information system in the USA. It provides medical care to 4 million veterans; 180 thousand employees work with it in 163 hospitals, 800 clinics and 135 nursing homes.
The beginnings of the system are the late 1970s (the beginning of the American medical strategic initiative). Currently, Vista is a branched IIA , covering almost all aspects of medical care, both in the hospital and in the clinic.
The system is built on the MUMPS language / platform, has a kernel, and about a hundred application software packages. Vista can also run on Caché DBMS based on MUMPS technology.
In Austin, there is the Austin Automation Center, and accordingly the national database of Vista, with which the databases of local systems are exchanged.
History of Vista
Vista began with the standardization of MUMPS ANSI in 1977. Two computer enthusiasts working in the Department of Veterans - Joseph (Ted) O'Neill and Marty Johnson - saw in MUMPS the base of the hospital system across the country. The first modules were a psychiatry test program (Gordon Moreshead, Wally, currently the Windows interface module MHA), a nutrition analysis program for diabetes (Richard Davis has since been involved in diabetes in demonstration programs), and computerization of radiation medicine (Joe Tatarczuk) .
In the USSR, the MUMPS standards did not receive support, and at present, Vista cannot work with the Russian language, although, according to some reports, work is underway in the Arab countries to switch to UTF-16 encoding.
System Configuration
In WistA, the local patient file (# 2) and the global patient index system (The Master Patient Index) are responsible for patient uniqueness. At the VA Automation Center in Austin, the patient index (i.e., real patients adhered to hospitals) is 14 million records. This architecture enables the transfer of patient records to any hospital.
The main interface is alphanumeric menus and data fields on the server. There are two main Windows CPRS client interfaces - access to electronic medical history and VistA Imaging access to a wide variety of medical images. The server interface allows you to switch to the functions and data of the system both hierarchically and directly to the data and functions of any level.
Under US law, VistA and CPRS are free to use, VistA Imaging is a commercial product, but there is a free version that has not yet passed the FDA certification. VistA Imaging can be ordered from the Department of Veterans.
The adoption of WhistA using barcodes (a bracelet on a patient with a barcode and drugs in containers with a barcode) allowed us to achieve the accuracy of working with drugs [ what? ] 99.997%.
The exchange of messages in Vista is carried out in accordance with the HL7 standard, work with medical images is provided in the DICOM standard. VistaA can be used both in a separate hospital and in the regional hospital system. In one of the implementation of Vista, it was possible to provide access to the electronic medical history from 128 medical institutions.
With the MyHealtheVet program, you can use your personal medical data in systems other than Vista.
The HealtheVet (HeV) project is developing the next generation of Vista.
Links
- LiuTiu - VistA English-Russian glossary (medical and administrative vocabulary)
- The use of Vista over the world (Germany, Nigeria, Egypt, Finland, etc.)]