Modernizing VistA, ClearHealth's Invaluable Lessons from 'Legacy' Technology and Ways Forward

The AMA, GAO, CBO and more than 5,000 practices agree that VistA is a clear winner and it has proven it self over more than 20 years of evolution. The VistA system and those offerings based on it are far and away the most widely used EMRs today. The VA healthcare system is the largest unified EMR system in the US, possibly in the world.

Why then isn’t VistA used everywhere and why is implementing it so hard for so many organizations? Those benefits have historically come at a high price with reliance on esoteric, out of the mainstream technologies that are difficult or impossible to reconcile with in todays environments like web-based and cloud computing. When ClearHealth began planning for its 3.0 edition in late 2006 we looked in detail at what makes VistA successful and how we could adapt that into a web-based and infinitely scalable comprehensive practice management (PM) and EMR.

Starting with usability research through high level data representations, the work-flow of VistA we’ll explore how the lessons and excellence of VistA are modernized using contemporary technologies in a system like ClearHealth 3 and how those lessons apply to all facilities implementing any kind of EMR.