About OpenVistA

WorldVistA was incorporated on March 18, 2002, as a non-profit corporation in the state of California, in the United States of America. It is a charitable organization approved by the US Internal Revenue Service under Section 501(c)(3) of the Federal Tax Code.

WorldVistA seeks to make healthcare information technology more affordable and more widely available both within the United States and internationally. In particular, WorldVistA is focused on further developing and supporting the growing global VistA community.

VistA is the largest integrated hospital software package in the world, and hospitals and clinics in many countries depend on it to manage such things as patient records, prescriptions, lab results, and other medical information. The use of VistA has been proven to improve patient treatment outcomes in many ways, including by reducing medical errors and by ensuring that clinicians can easily access all clinically relevant patient information.

WorldVistA was formed to extend and improve the VistA health information system for use outside of its original setting. The system was developed by the U.S. government for use in its veterans' hospitals and outpatient clinics. WorldVistA has a number of development efforts aimed at adding new software modules such as pediatrics, obstetrics, and other functions not used in the veterans' healthcare setting.

WorldVistA seeks to help those who choose to adopt the VistA system to successfully master, install, and maintain the software for their own use. WorldVistA will strive to guide VistA adopters and programmers towards developing a collaborative, consensus-based, open-source community.

For more information about VistA and the OpenVistA project go to http://worldvista.sourceforge.net/welcome.html.