Page 3 - FCW, May 2017

Trending
VA considers cloud-based ‘VistA as a service’
473 of 554 key Senate-confirmed
positions still lacked a nominee as of April 15
Difficulties with modernization and limits on interoperability with existing government and commercial systems have long bedeviled the system and raised concerns among watchdogs and lawmakers. In February, David Powner, director of IT management issues at the Government Account- ability Office, told Congress that “VA needstoletgoofVistAandgotoa commercial solution.”
At the GITEC Summit in April,
Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has promised a decision by July 1 on whether to retain the agency’s home- grown VistA electronic health record system or move to a commercial version.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is also charting a middle ground that would allow it to retain VistA, which is popular among agency physicians and highly rated in surveys. The approach would outsource the work of maintain- ing the code and negotiating the knotty problems of keeping multiple versions of the software working harmoniously.
In an April 12 request for informa- tion, the VA asks vendors for ideas on providing a cloud-based, commercial- ized form of VistA on a software-as- a-service basis. The goal would be to reduce the 130 instances of VistA at five VA data centers to a single version that a vendor would maintain in a high- security environment. Responses to the RFI were due by April 26.
VA officials are interested in a cloud- based VistA that would accommo- date multiple modes of presentation and integrate with the Computerized Patient Record System, the web- and mobile-friendly Enterprise Health Man- agement Platform and outside systems,
including the Joint Legacy Viewer that connects VA data with medical infor- mation from multiple Defense Depart- ment systems.
The RFI does not propose integrat- ing the non-clinical components of VistA. The architecture is used in VA’s financial, procurement, administrative and business systems.
VistA is in wide use in hospital systems worldwide. The underlying code is available from the VA under
“VA needs to let go of VistA and go to a commercial solution.”
the Freedom of Information Act, and a community of open-source providers and integrators has sprung up to serve commercial users of the system. Some of them are already on the books as VA contractors.
The system was developed by VA users in the 1980s using the Massachu- setts General Hospital Utility Multi-Pro- gramming System, a durable 50-year- old computer language better known as MUMPS.
— DAVID POWNER, GAO
Acting VA CIO Rob Thomas said the department has contracted with con- sulting firm Grant Thornton to help inform the decision.
A team led by PricewaterhouseCoo- pers bid on DOD’s multibillion-dollar electronic health record contract with a plan based on a version of VistA, although it was eliminated before the final decision was made.
— Adam Mazmanian and Chase Gunter
FCW CALENDAR
5/21-23 Innovation
ACT-IAC’s annual Management of Change conference
will explore biometrics, cloud migration, cognitive computing, IT modernization and more. Cambridge, Md. is.gd/FCW_MOC17
5/25 Workforce
NASA CIO Renee Wynn and the Technology Transformation Service’s Alla Goldman Seiffert are
among the panelists at this Young AFCEA Women in Technology Leadership event. Bethesda, Md. is.gd/FCW_IT_leaders
6/7 Enterprise IT
Machine learning, hybrid IT, workload automation and
infrastructure capacity management are all on the agenda at BMC Exchange Federal 2017. Washington, D.C. fcw.com/bmcexchange
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