Open Source, EHR and Other Resources
The nonprofits, Web sites and other resources below may be of use as you learn more about open-source electronic health record solutions and how they can help your organization improve patient safety and care quality, and move towards clinical transformation.
Open Source
Hardhats (Google Group)
This Group consists of members of the Hardhats.org community. Click here to learn more.
Hardhats
Hardhats.org is dedicated to fostering a virtual community for VISTA users around the world. "At VistA's very core . . . you have all the tools and materials you need to build an economical, efficient, scalable and integrated system. Add the VistA applications and you have a complete healthcare system." Click here to learn more.
Open eHealth Collaborative (Google Group)
The goal of the Open eHealth Collaborative is to promote an honest, open assessment of the role that health IT plays in the nation’s economic recovery plan. Members include open-source advocate Fred Trotter, Medsphere CMO Edmund Billings, MD, and Medsphere Ecosystem Director Ben Mehling. Click here to learn more.
Open Source Health Conference
OSHealthCon is facilitated by Fred Trotter, who says that "the point of the conference is to give projects a place to meet and to get communication between projects happening." Click here to learn more.
OSCON 2010: Healthcare Technology Track
"IT in healthcare is at a turning point, and open source is driving change and collaboration across the industry," say organizers of the O’Reilly Open Source Conference. This year, OSCON is opening its doors to open-source healthcare technology. Click here for more on OSCON 2010, scheduled for July 19-23, 2010 in Portland, Ore.
Vistapedia
Vistapedia is a wiki for several varieties of the public domain versions of VistA and RPMS. Information about the integrated VistA installer called Astronaut is also contained within these pages. This wiki covers installation, configuration, and usage of these VistA derivatives. It also serves as an introduction to the VistA Documentation Library for everyone outside the VA. The site also serves as an online bulletin board for current events, development advances and other news about the flavors of VistA.
Patient Safety & Quality Improvement
IHI
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement "believes patients deserve safe and effective health care" and has been working with healthcare providers and leaders throughout the world for more than 20 years to fulfill that promise. Known for the ways in which they inspire, innovate, convene in-person and virtual learning opportunities, and mobilize teams, organizations and nations to adopt best practices and put new ideas into action, IHI aims "to improve care at home, in the community, in the office practice, on the medical-surgical floor, in the intensive care unit, and everywhere in between"
Hundreds of provider organizations, including some of the world’s finest hospitals and medical practices, have deployed IHI’s ideas and techniques to dramatically improve patient care. Many of these are described in more detail in IHI’s Innovation Series white papers. Click here for a list of all IHI programs.
ISMP
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices is devoted entirely to medication error prevention and safe medication use. ISMP represents more than 30 years of experience in helping healthcare practitioners keep patients safe, and continues to lead efforts to improve the medication use process. The organization is known and respected worldwide as the premier resource for impartial, timely and accurate medication safety information.
"Computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) for medications gives healthcare organizations the ability to provide prescribers with a collection, or set, of predefined standardized orders that address common patient conditions." New ISMP guidelines can help ensure that such order sets
are carefully designed, reviewed and maintained in order to prevent errors.
NPSF
Since 1997, the National Patient Safety Foundation® has been diligently working to improve the safety of the healthcare
system for patients. NPSF focuses on uniting disciplines and organizations across the continuum of care, championing a collaborative, inclusive, multi-stakeholder
approach. Its annual Patient Safety Congress helps move the mission forward and provide actionable information.
Safety Net Institute
The California Health Care Safety Net Institute assures that public hospital systems are recognized leaders in delivering and transforming health care practices that enable all individuals and families—particularly in diverse and underserved communities—to enjoy optimal health. Click on SNI for more info.
TMIT
Founded by Charles Denham, MD, the Texas Medical Institute of Technology is a nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to driving adoption of clinical solutions healthcare performance improvement. TMIT has established a National Research Test Bed of more than 3100 hospitals—the world's largest virtual laboratory. TMIT R&D accelerates the adoption of high-impact performance improvement solutions, products, services and technologies. TMIT has established national, state and local collaborative Pay-for-Performance programs, and taskforces with such organizations as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The Joint Commission, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, The Leapfrog Group and the National Quality Forum. Click on Dennis Quaid to access an important patient safety video produced by TMIT.