WorldVistA, a volunteer-run nonprofit, supports hospitals in adopting the VA’s public domain Vista software, helping them computerize health records without licensing fees.
— WorldVistA, a volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on healthcare software access, announces volunteer support to make VistA, the electronic health record software developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, available to hospitals without licensing fees. The organization pays particular attention to low-income and rural hospitals, and it works through education and volunteer support rather than software sales.
Electronic health records have become a basic expectation in modern medicine, yet the cost of adopting them can decide whether a hospital moves off paper at all. For smaller and underserved facilities, the choice often comes down to priorities and how limited resources are used. Dave Whitten, chief technical officer of WorldVistA, points to Central Regional Hospital in North Carolina, where the system that replaced WorldVistA’s work cost several hundreds of millions of dollars. WorldVistA’s focus there was getting the hospital’s records computerized rather than kept on paper.
“The point of this work is not to look impressive,” says Whitten. “It is about trying to help change the way health care computing is done.”
The model rests on VistA’s legal status. As VistA is a government-owned software system, it sits in the public domain, with no copyright restrictions applying. WorldVistA obtains copies of the software through the Freedom of Information Act and makes them available for redistribution. That framework could mean that the organization cannot impose license conditions or require payment for using the software, and hospitals are free to use and modify the system.
Free software still demands expertise, and WorldVistA’s support is built around that reality. The organization holds four conferences a year, now run virtually, to share knowledge about the VistA system. Weekly conference calls on Mondays and Saturdays offer users and prospective users live question-and-answer sessions and a community to lean on. WorldVistA has no paid staff; its work is carried out by volunteers and by the effort of the hospitals themselves.
VistA is designed to be most useful to hospitals, and WorldVistA’s model asks something of them. Rather than implementing the system on a hospital’s behalf, the organization helps each hospital do the work itself, which requires motivation and internal capacity on the hospital’s side.
“WorldVistA is not a company trying to do the job for a hospital,” Whitten explains. “It helps hospitals do it for themselves, and that takes a different kind of motivation and a different kind of effort.”
The system itself is used well beyond the United States. WorldVistA counts roughly 25 clients using VistA worldwide. Several companies in India use the system, and the country of Jordan relies on it as the main electronic health system for the whole country. Whitten, who worked for the VA in health-related computing, notes that the organization also has a history of helping organizations computerize their records so they could receive government payments under meaningful use.
Its challenges are as much about awareness as technology. Whitten notes that VistA has been around for a long time, and some people may hold that history against it. The organization also operates alongside commercial competitors with huge numbers of people working on and implementing their systems, while WorldVistA runs on volunteers. Longevity can be read another way, however: a system still in use after many years is one that hospitals and health systems have continued to rely on.
Looking ahead, WorldVistA aims to add two more clients over the next six to twelve months. The target is deliberately modest. Hospitals commonly take a year and a half to two years to reach a decision on a system of this kind, and the organization is aware of the limits that come with volunteer status. Whitten describes the goal behind it all simply: to help make affordable health care records available.
For hospital leaders, donors and policymakers weighing the cost of electronic records, WorldVista’s work is a reminder that a publicly owned alternative already exists, and that a community of volunteers is ready to help hospitals learn to run it themselves. The value of that alternative depends less on price than on whether decision makers know it is there.
“Having people know who WorldVista is matters,” Whitten notes. “What matters more is that they realize how they can use what it offers to be effective in their own particular endeavors.”
Contact Info:
Name: Dave Whitten
Email: Send Email
Organization: WorldVistA
Phone: +1(416)2321206
Website: https://worldvista.org/
Release ID: 89207844
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