Presentations
1. Oklahoma Project Presentation by Claudine Beron
Here is a copy of Ms. Beron's presentation in pdf format.
2. Draft Community Plan by Joel West and Siobhan O'Mahony
Here is a copy of his presentation in pdf format.
Meeting Overview
VistA Community Meetings are working meetings.
Ultimately, the agenda of a VistA Community Meeting is driven by the interests of the participants. The first
session is a round table where the participants introduce themselves and state their objectives for the meeting. The
meeting's tracks are then finalized and working groups are formed. The groups work independently (often in the same
room), with regular plenary sessions to review progress. The following are the common activities of VistA Community
Meetings.
Software installation -- anyone who attends the meeting with a laptop or personal computer
will have an opportunity to leave with the VistA open source free software (OSFS) stack installed on it. Attendees
are invited to bring their personal computers with network cards and cables or WiFi cards. Development coordination -- there is ongoing VistA development in the VistA community outside
the VA, and the VA provides regular updates of VistA. These parallel developments must be merged in order to keep
VistA coherent. Education and information sharing -- although VistA is easy to use in a clinical setting, it
is a tremendously capable system that takes expertise to configure and maintain. There is literally no one person
who is expert in all aspects of VistA. Advocacy -- since VistA is in the public domain, there is no vendor with a large marketing
budget to publicize and promote it. The economy around VistA is based on providing services. Thus, public advocacy
of VistA plays a significant role in the effort to bring to society the benefits of VistA--a monumental and valuable
project for which we have paid (and continue to pay) with our tax dollars.
The meetings are opportunities to work hard--individuals are often there late into the evening--and also to
interact with others from around the country, and sometimes around the world, who share an interest in improving the
quality and affordability of healthcare through the use of the VistA OSFS stack.
Agenda
The Seattle meeting is organized around four tracks:
VistA as a Teaching Tool -- How can VistA be used to aid in teaching medicine?
How can it be used to help teach medical informatics? If there are medical standards that govern the
practice of medicine, what about the practice of medical informatics? What features should a pharmacy
or laboratory software package provide before it can be called a pharmacy of lab package? What are
VistA's strengths and weaknesses regarding these questions? During this track, medical professionals
and VistA experts will collaborate to produce some initial diagnoses, prognoses, and guidelines for
future exploration. Building the VistA Community -- WorldVistA grew out of the Hardhats to extend
its reach with a formal organization. Now that its first phase of development--its birth--is complete,
WorldVistA needs to be molded into a collaborative membership organization that acts as a community
center, like a New England village commons. At the ninth meeting in Houston, VistA
community members met to discuss the essential features of an organizational model and operating plan
for WorldVistA. At this meeting we need to finish the design, begin accepting membership, and formally
launch several collaborative projects. OpenVistA Goes Live -- With several hospitals and clinics seriously pursuing
installation of OpenVistA in production, we need to refine, verify, and document the version of
OpenVistA that they will install. By the end of this meeting, we want to distribute CDs with OpenVistA
version 3.0 as a first production version. Installing OpenVistA -- Attendees interested in installing Linux, GT.M, and
VistA on their laptops will have the chance to work together with volunteers to learn how to do this
and to help document the process of installing and configuring OpenVistA.
Meeting Venue
The University of Washington School of Dentistry is hosting this meeting, which is being held at the Warren G.
Magnuson Health Sciences Center.
Hotels
Here are some nearby hotels:
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