The Department of Veterans Affairs began operations on its new open source Electronic Health Record community yesterday signifying a significant milestone in the VA’s joint effort with the Department of Defense to create a single electronic health record for service members and Veterans, the agency announced.
“We developed our open source strategy to engage the public and private sectors in the rapid advancement of our EHR software, which is central to the care we deliver to Veterans and servicemembers and to our joint EHR collaboration with the Department of Defense,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki.
The Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent will oversee the community of EHR users, developers, and service providers that will deploy, use, and enhance the EHR software, according to the agency.
Draft documents describing key framework components, such as the design of its code repository and the definition of its software quality certification process, are available on the OSEHRA community website. Community feedback is welcome as the OSEHRA team finalizes these designs in preparation for launch of full technical operations this fall, according to the agency.
