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United States Software Linux

U.S. Government Crafted OSS 247

Posted by Zonk from the gifts-from-above dept.
matthewg writes "According to the New York Times the federal government has developed an open-source medical records system. It was originally developed for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and doctors started obtaining it under FOIA requests. Some good information on the process of converting it from an internal project to a deployable system exists, and how its open nature has made the system better is available at the WorldVista site." From the article: "Medicare has not estimated what its software giveaway is worth. But Duncan Pringle, chief Vista technologist at Perot Systems, said that each doctor in a practice paid about $20,000 to $25,000 to get started with a commercial system, including costs of software, a license fee charged to each doctor, installation and servicing."
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U.S. Government Crafted OSS More

U.S. Government Crafted OSS

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  • Vista (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OneBarG ( 640139 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:12PM (#13136138)
    So we can agree that the word "Vista" is the only reason this story is here, right?

    • Re:Vista (Score:5, Funny)

      by EasyTarget ( 43516 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:19PM (#13136199) Journal
      Microsoft are like, so gonna sue their asses.

      I mean it's incredible, the new windoze name has only been known for half a day, and already evil linux commies are trying to cash in on their intellectual properties.

      • Re:Vista (Score:3, Interesting)

        by srmalloy ( 263556 )
        Given that DHCP/Vista has been around since long before Microsoft began developing Windows XP, much less Longhorn, as well as the fact that trying to sue the Veteran's Administration would be a PR debacle, I don't think that Bill Gates would be stupid enough to try -- going into court and having the VA produce decade-old documents demonstrating the prior use of the name would get the case dismissed with prejudice, and Microsoft would probably lose all rights to the name and have to put off their OS release
  • I also hear Microsoft Vista will be Open Source as well ;)

    Oh shit, sorry, its not April 1st.

  • Note to self: (Score:5, Funny)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:14PM (#13136156) Homepage
    Doctors are paying US$20k per head for software installs.

    Nice to know in case my current day job comes to an unfortunate end.

    • Re:Note to self: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nightsweat ( 604367 )
      Yeah, but try invoicing them and collecting. Doctors are the only clients slower to pay than lawyers.

    • Re:Note to self: (Score:5, Informative)

      by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:29PM (#13136306)
      I'm working in this field.

      It's not exactly an install-and-forget situation -- not remotely. The hardware is expensive, the support is labor-intensive (and most often involves sending people on-site to fix things that don't belong to us), and the set of 3rd-party software we need to write integrations for is massive.

      Oh -- and from what I hear, this particular system is much despised by most of the MDs who use it. Certainly, the ones we have on staff have little but contempt (granted, we're a competitor) and one of my coworkers who's spent some time as a VA patient has repeatedly heard similar sentiments.

      • Re:Note to self: (Score:5, Informative)

        by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:44PM (#13136429) Journal
        Oh -- and from what I hear, this particular system is much despised by most of the MDs who use it.

        Which is the reverse of what I hear. I was at a medical conference recently trying to pitch our own wares, and it seemed to me that half the people at the conference were from the state penitentiary system and used the state's software, and the other half were from VA hospitals and used Vista. I was told fairly consistently by the VA docs that they loved the system and that they'd never use anything else. Of course, the hospital set it up for these doctors, so they never had to deal with any of the guts.

        Looking at the system myself, it looks like 99% of the headache is in setting it up. Once it's configured correctly, that's when you get the doctors praising it like it was the best thing since sliced bread.

        The most interesting thing about the article is that the software's been Free all along, some group issued a FOIA request for the source code and got it, and it's been an opensource project for at least a year now.

        • Re:Note to self: (Score:4, Informative)

          by Mad_Rain ( 674268 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:43PM (#13136990) Journal
          I've used the system at the VA hospitals, after working in a hospital with no computerized record system.

          Let me tell you, there is night and day differences between the accessability and the readability of patient information in these two places. First, patient history of several years length is instantly available with the computerized system. Which is important when you're looking at the treatment path of someone who has been chronically ill and you don't want to restart a prior treatment that aparently did not help the patient. In the other hospital (a county hospital) system, we'd have a written binder of the current visit (usually up to a month or two), and later records we'd have to request from another department further information when needed.

          Second, the vast majority of the doctor-entered information is in a standardized layout. At my prior location, there were several different layouts for the same SOAP (Subjective compliant, Objective evaluation, Assessment/Treatment, Plan) notes. With Vista, the notes I saw were all organized in much the same way, regardless of the care provider. (And don't get me started on doctor's handwriting ;) ).

          And on another note - At the VA system I work in, I can expect about a monthly email saying when the Outlook system is going down for an upgrade or patch, and how we can expect outages over a couple of days. It seems like we get fewer emails about how Vista will be out for maybe a few hours (usually like 2am to 6am) with far less frequency. Again, it seems like it is much more stable once it's set up.
        • Looking at the system myself, it looks like 99% of the headache is in setting it up. Once it's configured correctly, that's when you get the doctors praising it like it was the best thing since sliced bread.

          So in other words, it's pretty much like every other piece of software out there with a fairly complex task to do. Just take a guess whether the praise or the complaints will get the most airtime...

      • Re:Note to self: (Score:4, Insightful)

        by matria ( 157464 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:54PM (#13136519)
        I worked for two years in the medical records department of a large university medical campus environment and I never met a single doctor who liked any of the many different computerized systems used in the various departments across the campus or in the attached clinics and hospitals. Basically they were all unhappy about having to learn how to use the system and fought it tooth and nail, thus never learning it well. The only ones that were at all happy about the computerized systems were the ones who had very good secretaries and nurses who did all their computer work for them. "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a computer tech!"

        Even where I live now, in a different country that has a national health care system, every time I have a doctor's appointment, they're OK with swiping my card across the reader at the beginning, but they all have sour faces and bang on the keyboard with two fingers as they fill out the necessary forms. I've been here 8 years and never yet saw a doctor who was comfortable with the system. And I've seen doctors of all ages from quite a number of different countries, India, Russia, Canada, South Africa, Australia, France, England, Cuba, and they all react in the same way.

        • Re:Note to self: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by daigu ( 111684 )
          My girlfriend is a doctor. She isn't big on computers either, but she loves the fact that systems like these enables her to look at images, keep tabs on patients and review patient information from home. It probably doesn't hurt that I solve the tech support problems for her...

      • Re:Note to self: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dr_canak ( 593415 )
        I work at a VA, and use the electronic medical record system daily. I have also worked at three of the largest teaching hospitals in my area. I can tell you, hands down, that the system in place at the VA does a horizon shot on anything out there currently in the private sector.

        It is an extremely complex piece of software, which is highly modular. With that said...

        (1) It is comprehensive in that it includes everything about a patient's medication history, treatment history, all progress notes, labs, im

    • No shit.

      I mean, I know you were being funny, but I did some digging in to what it actually makes it so difficult to install that the docs are willing to pay ten large.

      Here's [geocities.com] what I came up with.

      A basic installation doesn't look like anything tougher than an afternoon's work.

      Maybe it's time to pick up a part time job...

  • missing hyphen? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:14PM (#13136159) Journal
    I'm guessing this is meant to read 'U.S. Government-Crafted OSS'. Then it makes sense.

  • Now I understand... (Score:4, Funny)

    by blcamp ( 211756 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:16PM (#13136168) Homepage

    How the U.S. Government has been saying "asta la VISTA" to our taxpayer dollars.

    Sorry. Had to say it...

  • Don't Forget (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:16PM (#13136175) Homepage Journal
    U.S. Government Crafted OSS

    Let's not forget that the Government was doing OSS before OSS existed. The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) was funded by DARPA during the creation of the Internet. Due to the rules behind government funding, the BSD Operating System (it was originally just some tools) was released free to the public.

    It makes sense if you think about it. Public funds are going into making the software. So who should own the design? The public, of course! Entities like NASA have the same requirements, save for when NASA pays third parties to do the development (in which case the developer owns the rights).
    • Back in the 50's and 60's, most computer companies were OSS. Back then, you did not get programs. You got source code that you would compile. It was not until software companies came to be that programs were sent as executables.
      • Back in the 50's and 60's, most computer companies were OSS.

        Actually, that persisted throughout the history of mainframes. The primary reason was that the code had to be linked directly against the database. (Abstraction was not a feature anyone wanted to pay for.) I was still using a mainframe that derived from third party source code in the late 1990's. :-)

        However, these companies weren't really OSS as OSS is defined by the OSI. [opensource.org] The OSI defines Open Source as both having the code and being able to for
        • How funny. I was using mainframes in the 70s :)

          But you are correct. It was not true OSS. But we did have access to the code and could make changes as well as see why we were having problems. And yes, all the code back then had something to say that we could not release the code to others.

    • Re:Don't Forget (Score:5, Informative)

      by dominator ( 61418 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:48PM (#13136460) Homepage
      While I happen to agree with you, the Feds don't. In 1980, Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act [wikipedia.org], which allowed government-funded institutions to own the IP rights of the things they created (using public money).

      The Feds are also increasingly using contractors to assemble and produce various sensitive information and products - a legal loophole that makes sure that the FOIA doesn't apply.

      Just FWIW.

    • Re:Don't Forget (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dsci ( 658278 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:49PM (#13136473) Homepage
      Public funds are going into making the software. So who should own the design? The public, of course!

      Well, public funds helped finance the development of CHEETAH, for example. But, you cannot get a copy of it unless you are ALREADY a government contactor. You are out of luck if you want to use it to do proof-of-concept to GET a contract.

      Also, our tax dollars fund all that wonderful NSF and DOE research in academia. BUT, if I want to read the results of that research, I need a subscription to a privately published journal. I can read the abstract online, but the 'buy the article,' one lousy article is about a third of the cost of an annual subscription.

      (And yes, I am a proponent of open publication of scientific results. And yes, I know I can got the university library, a 40 mile trip, and probably read the articles I want).

      I'd be willing to bet you could name many other examples of publicly generated intellectual property that is not freely available.

      • Re:Don't Forget (Score:2, Interesting)

        by crashley ( 687791 )
        The Government will do research on a subject, then send the results off to have the data evaluated by a private company. It is the company that is either the publisher, or will publish it in a private journal. Since the article you are requesting will include research and conclusions that might are not Govenrment owned the FOIA wont help to get access to it. But if you want to get the raw data that was sent in for evaluation originally, the FOIA will get it for you, as long as the information is not classif
        • CHEETAH, like many others, is a software package developed in government labs or by academic researchers under government contract. If I am a government contractor, I can get CHEETAH for free, no problem. Though both I as an individual AND my company pay federal taxes, I cannot get CHEETAH to do feasibility calculations to GET the contract I was after.

          Consider another example. There is a protein docking package that was developed in academia. Academic researchers can get it FOR FREE, but as a private

  • US Gvt. develops a medical software system... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gsfprez ( 27403 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:16PM (#13136177)
    based upon open source software... so it should absolutely be available to the public.

    now, if you can tell me anything that should be MORE open source than this, I don't know what it is. Its based on GPL software and developed with my tax dollars. Hells yeah, I should get a copy of this as a US citizen and taxpayer.

    I know that there are some very good medical records software pacakages out there... either they innovate or they die. Meaning, either they go to work, work and make their software better, or they die.

    That sounds pretty much like why i go to work every day.... i don't see why software developers should get a free pass.
    • This is public domain software -- it's not under any license, because nobody owns it, but anyone who has a copy can do whatever they want with it.

      • With Public-Domain software I can do ANYTHING?!?

        Doe that include slapping a GPL onto it...
        (ie, even if I didn't write it?!?

        • Re:ANYTHING?!? (Score:3, Informative)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) *

          With Public-Domain software I can do ANYTHING?!? Doe that include slapping a GPL onto it... (ie, even if I didn't write it?!?

          I don't think so. You can certainly distribute it and claim that you're doing so under the GPL, no problem. But if someone then decides to, say, take your version and sell it as closed source, you probably don't have any legal recourse, because the GPL derives its power from the privileges granted to the copyright holder, and you do not own that copyright. No one does, act

          • I hadn't really thought about this before in terms of software. I have been thinking about it in terms of books recently. We've got all these children's books that are obviously based on public domain sources. One is simply a well known nursery rhyme on each page with an illustration. Of course the enitre book is copyrighted. But the rhymes themselves are obviously public domain. Could I just take the text of those rhymes from the copyrighted book and publish my own book? What are the rules here?
            • Of course the enitre book is copyrighted. But the rhymes themselves are obviously public domain. Could I just take the text of those rhymes from the copyrighted book and publish my own book?

              So long as the publishers of the book didn't change the rhymes at all (ie. modernizing the spelling), sure.

            • Maybe. Some of the rhymes that everyone knows are not as old as you think - someone holds copyright on them. (The song Happy Birthday is an obvious example)

              Many books will change one word here and there. They may be able to copyright that change, see a lawyer. (In theory only substantial changes can be copyrighted)

              They can copyright their layout even if everything (even the art) is public domain. You could potentially get in trouble for publishing a book with exactly the same public domain poems

        • With Public-Domain software I can do ANYTHING?!?

          Doe that include slapping a GPL onto it...
          (ie, even if I didn't write it?!?

          Yup. (Of course, someone *else* can slap a BSD license onto it, and someone *else* can use it with no license at all).
    • I should get a copy of this as a US citizen and taxpayer.

      Ahhh, but the question is do you feel that a Canadian, Japanese, or (god forbid!) French citizen/doctor/whoever should be able to get a copy of this for free also?
    • now, if you can tell me anything that should be MORE open source than this, I don't know what it is. Its based on GPL software and developed with my tax dollars. Hells yeah, I should get a copy of this as a US citizen and taxpayer.

      That's incredibly faulty logic. The US gov't makes and builds and buys billions of dollars worth of stuff every day. That doesn't mean you're entitled to it.
    • Vista was developed by the Government starting back in the late 70s - early 80s when the GPL was just a twinkle in Stallman's eye, as can be seen here [worldvista.org]. It is written in a near obsolete language called MUMPS. It was (and still is to some extent) accessed via VT100 telnet. A GUI and extra components were added in the 90s. Because it was developed by the Government, it is public domain. The OSS version [sourceforge.net] is based on the Government's work.

      • If I'm not mistaken, MUMPS is not obsolete. I believe it's still massively used in the medical industry.

        See this:

        MUMPS - Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System. A
        database-oriented OS and the language that goes with it. Used originally for medical records. Only data type is the character string. Persistent associative arrays. Current versions for IBM RT and R6000, DSM (Digital Standard Mumps) for DEC, Datatree MUMPS for IBM PC, Unix MUMPS from PFCS . "MUMPS Language Standard"

  • How long will this last? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by finse ( 63518 ) <rpkish@gmail.com> on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:17PM (#13136191) Homepage Journal
    Overall, this sounds like a pretty good deal for just about everyone except the proprietary software vendors. Does anyone here really think the proprietary software vendors will let this stand? I am willing to bet said vendors either a) lobby congress to pass a bill banning Medicare from providing this software or b) sue the government under a 'no compete' clause.

    • Re:How long will this last? (Score:4, Informative)

      by gsfprez ( 27403 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:40PM (#13136399)
      I worked with Aerospace Corporation, which is a FFRDC. Basically, it means its a non-profit company that works for the govt. strictly, and pays the high prices for Phds that the govt. can't pay - but since its thru a contract, we could. That also meant that they were a neutral party that could help us evaluate what contractors were telling us, since they couldn't possibly ever get the work.

      In any case, they made an analysis tool call SOAP - Satellite Orbital Analysts Toolkit. Over time, it became VERY powerful - almost STK powerful.

      But since it was developed on the govt's dime, STK had a shit fit. They sent letters to congress bitching that this outfit's tool was taking away their profits, since the govt. types didn't need to buy STK licenses any more in many cases.

      I was always pissed about this a) because STK is the kitchen sink, the outhouse, the back yard, and the garage of satellite tools, and SOAP was great because it was a philips-head screwdriver, and often, all i wanted to do was screw in a screw - i didn't NEED anything more. b) STK's basic ppackage was "free" - but it didnt actually do jack shit, and to start working with it seriously was a $30k software outlay. c) we PAID for the SOAP software by paying the salaries of the guys that wrote it - so why should we get bitch slapped around for using it?

      In the long run, it just ended up a constant feud, with the STK guys sending out nastygrams every few months, and we'd put boxes of STK on the wall and throw darts at it...

      because i worked very close with the SOAP developers, and was sickened to think that TWO GUYS could make a better tool than the whole building full of people at STK. Bastard whiners.
    • You do not know what you are talking about and should be moderated accordingly.

      lobby congress to pass a bill banning Medicare from providing this software

      Government produced information is public domain. Period.

      sue the government under a 'no compete' clause

      "no compete" clauses generally refer to provisions in a contract between two parties. What might that contract be in this case?

      • There was an article posted on /. a little while ago about how the private weather companies are lobbying congress to force the National Weather Service to stop giving any non-emergency data to private entities, because it isn't fair that the gov't is competing with the private sector. I think it's ridiculous, personally, as I paid for the weather data to begin with, so I should get a copy for my own purposes. If the privates want to stay in business, they'll have to offer me something above and beyond wh
    • There is a lot that goes into an inpatient system aside from medical records that this wouldn't cover. This also looks a lot more like what a clinic group would use for charting than a full suite of medical software.

      The software itself, while quite expensive, is only part of the cost of having a medical software suite. There is also a lot of money in supporting and customizing the software and general support. The IT staff at a lot of hospitals and clinic groups don't tend to be that tech savvy. There
  • Quick, someone come up with a retronym for "LONGHORN".

  • Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by catherder_finleyd ( 322974 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:19PM (#13136203)
    I will wager that part of the costs mentioned in the article were for installation, integration, and support. Which means the MDs still have to pay, and we IT-people have an opportunity!
  • Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention but the article seemed to say "distributing for free, usually costs $10K". It didn't seem to say "Open Source" anywhere... Does anyone actually know anything about this program?
    • Does anyone actually know anything about this program?

      I suppose actually going to the site linked in the submission would be too hard? There you can read that it really is a F/OSS, GNU/Linux-based system.

  • So the US Government Crafted OSS? I am most excited to learn that George W Bush invented Linux! Won't Al Gore be jealous!

  • Stuck in a rut (Score:4, Funny)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:24PM (#13136251) Journal
    OK, here's some flamebait.

    An open souce project that provides great value and fills a really important need that is hard to install and maintain.

    Where have I heard that before?

  • Vista is written in mumps (Score:5, Informative)

    by GGardner ( 97375 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:25PM (#13136258)
    Sadly, though, Vista is written in the MUMPS programming language, which is quite possibly the worst, commercially successful programming language evar. Some unique things about mumps:

    MUMPS is line-oriented, like old-school BASIC

    Evaluation is strictly left-to-right, so 3 + 4 * 5 Doesn't yield the result you think.

    There are no local variables. Everything is global, except for "globals", which are persistent, and stored in a hierarchical file on disk.

    • Might explain part of why it's difficult to get up and running.

      Anyone make a MUMPS automatic translator to a better language?

    • Re:Vista is written in mumps (Score:4, Informative)

      by Nigel_Powers ( 880000 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:33PM (#13136338)
      Does anyone else find humor in the fact that a medical records application is programmed using a language with the same name as a childhood illness?

      Not being familiar with MUMPS, I looked it up and found the ever-popular hello world example:
      hello
      f w "Hello World!",!
      Aside from MUMPS and ADA, does the gub'ment use any non-wacky programming languages?
      • Well, MUMPS was developed by a MD (patholigist IIRC) at Mass. General Hosp. as a Utilities Multi-Programming System. Just like GNU, he gets to name it and had a bit of fun with it.
      • Ada is not really a 'wacky' programming language, just not as common. The language itself is quite sensable and manageable. It was designed to be a robust language as well as encourage robust code. When you have mission criticle situations where programming / code errors are not an option, then what else will you use? C? C++? Perl? They couldn't find an acceptable solution so they came up with their own (keep in mind this language was first drafted over 20 years ago).

        I don't much like Ada myself, but
    • Mumps code:

      f p=2,3:2 s q=1 x "f f=3:2 q:f*f>p!'q s q=p#f" w:q p,?$x\8+1*8

      [part of Keith Lynch's .signature; it prints a table of primes,
      including code to format it neatly into columns--DPBS]
      (from ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.lang.mumps/M_T e chnology_and_MUMPS_Language_FAQ,_Part_1_2 [mit.edu]
      )

      line noise?

      Perl's got nothing on mumps.
    • I couldn't be any worse than COBOL could it?
    • Wait, wait, you're saying Microsoft's Vista [slashdot.org] is written in a limited, line oriented language?

      No WONDER it keeps getting delayed!
    • Obligatory Wikipedia link: MUMPS [wikipedia.org]

      You forgot the only thing that makes MUMPS worth programming in: the array structure. Arrays are string indexed and are stored as B trees, making it easy to create your own DB structures. It can be faster than SQL DBs in applications with enough data and dimensions, hence its creation and use at hospitals (the first M is for Massachusetts general hospital) and its use in the financial sector. See the article for more stuff if you're interested (including links to open sour

    • Local variables (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tony ( 765 )
      There are no local variables.

      Of course there are local variables-- that's what the N directive is all about. It's local within the scope of the in which it was declared.
    • I used Mumps/M back in the 80's. It was rock solid for doing apps. At metpath labs, we did some massive apps with these and it was fine. While it has been 25 years since I used it, there were different implementations of the language, of which some had local variables (in subroutines). As to the global/persistent, who cares. It was simply a way to access the data. Even today, most DBs are nothing more than a hierarchical access.

  • This will be illegal in a few years (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:26PM (#13136270) Homepage Journal
    Sooner or later, the Big Dollar Software Industry will sneak a little-noticed provision into some bill that will require the government to either buy commercial software or give vendors a chance to "underbid" custom software before the gov't develops its own, at least for big projects.

    Furthermore, The Industry will make sure that if the government does make any of its own software, it must either not release it or charge more than industry does for similar solutions.

    At least that's how I see The Industry spending it's lobbying dollars.

  • Wheres the tarball? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by waferhead ( 557795 ) <waferhead&yahoo,com> on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:26PM (#13136275)
    I want to see if it will build on Mandrake 10.2.

    Seriously, is this REALLY open source?

    If my tax dollars paid for it's development, I want source...

    (Visualizing nice canned preconfigured Linux or Mac boxes for Doctors offices///healthcare facilities)

    • Re:Wheres the tarball? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ValentineMSmith ( 670074 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:00PM (#13136593)
      Well, it's public domain, freely available via the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

      And, you can indeed have all of the source you want. But, unless you're prepared to read and modify source code that looks like:

      S %=DP, X=D, Y=$P(DQ(DQ),U,4)="0:1"

      you probably won't be able to do much with the code.

      It's written in (M)umps, an old, old, heirarchial database developed for (surprise) hospital use by the Massachusetts General Hospital [wikipedia.org]. The V.A. began developing this system in the early to mid-80's and some of the originals (like George Timson) are still involved the last I heard. They've added a relational database layer (complete with reporting system) on top of the M layer, and have implemented pretty much everything a hospital would need (from prescriptions to e-mail to patient encounter information and so on) in this language.

      Right about the time Delphi 1 came out, the V.A. decided they needed to get into the GUI game and created a component that could be used from Delphi to transmit data to and from a V.A. database via TCP stream. This is the basis of the graphical system that an earlier poster mentioned.

      Since then, there's been a lot of incredibly cool work done by programmers in the V.A. with this system. I worked as a programmer for the Topeka V.A.M.C. when they did the GUI patient medication admistration system, which caused the incidence of patient medication errors to drop through the floor (I didn't do much of the work on it, but went Cowboy Action Shooting on the weekends with the guy that did).

      For all of the abuse that a lot of government employees take on /., pretty much every programmer I ever met or worked with in the V.A. was bright, dedicated, professional, and knew their business.

      Anyway, if you're truly serious about downloading this, you need to go to Intersystems [intersystems.com] and download a copy of Cache for either Windows or Linux, and then go to Hardhats [sourceforge.net] and download the the database. Back when I was still working with it, they had an actual Cache database file that you could download that was already pretty much preconfigured. Since it's been almost 4 years since I've done any VistA work, I'm not sure what the current state of the system is.

      And for those of you saying that the commercial software companies aren't going to stand for this competition: the V.A. would periodically evaluate SQL-based databases to see if they could meet the needs of the V.A. Every test I'd ever heard of said that there was no software out there that could meet the needs of the V.A. and, even if they could find software that met their needs, the conversion from one system to another would be nightmarish (to say the least).

      • Well, it's public domain, freely available via the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

        More to the point, it's freely available via *Sourceforge*! (As if the guy you're responding to has the slightest need for a hundred megs of MUMPS code, let alone plans to audit the thing before opening his Mandrake-based hospital.)

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:30PM (#13136316)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • hl7 (Score:2)

    by jjshoe ( 410772 )
    unless it does hl7 [hl7.org] it's junk.

  • A complete open source VistA stack (Score:5, Informative)

    by popocatapetl ( 223570 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:34PM (#13136347)
    There is a complete open source stack of VistA on GT.M on Linux. You can download a ready to run Linux live CD from the WorldVistA site at Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/worldvista [sourceforge.net]). Grab a 512MB / 1GB USB flash drive, download and burn a CD image, and you're good to go.

  • Vista isn't actually open source in the normal way (Score:5, Informative)

    by wildephyre ( 260552 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:35PM (#13136351)
    It's public domain for starters, and Vista has existed in some form or another since the late 1960's. And how the Veterans Department releases it isn't actually in a functioning form.
    I did some investigation into it a few months back as one of my customers is a small rural hospital who is shelling out a large sum of money to both IBM and a small software vendor for their management software/hardware.
    The biggest knock on Vista is that its written in MUMPS [wikipedia.org], a rather obscure programming language dating to the late 60's. It's a really interesting language, but altogether it's something of a pain to deal with, and the only two open source implementations of it are the Sanchez GT/M stuff that WorldVista uses (which I'm not even sure *IS* open source, the licensing isn't very clear on it, further, alot of it is written in assembler which means its effectively non-portable), and another MUMPS->C translator developed by a guy at the University of Northern Iowa. http://math-cs.cns.uni.edu/~okane/cgi-bin/newpres/ m.compiler/compiler/index.cgi [uni.edu] It's an interesting (and really very solid) system, but unless the MUMPS language it's written in gets some serious support behind it, it's lack of portability and available toolkits will doom it to further oblivion.
    • > The biggest knock on Vista is that
      > its written in MUMPS, a rather
      > obscure programming language

      Wow, so true. From gtm_V5.0-000/_RSEL.m:

      f s d=$o(d("D",d)) q:d="" i $p=$p(d("D",d)," ") s d=d("D",d),ctrap=$p($p(d,"CTRA=",2)," "),exc=$p(d,"EXCE=",2) q
      e s (ctrap,exc)="" ; should never happen
      s k=$l(exc,"""")
      s k=$l(exc) i $e(exc,1,1)="""",$e(exc,k,k)="""" s exc=$e(exc,2,k-1)
      if ctrap'="" s exc="s ctrap="_ctrap x exc
      k d
      s (cnt,rd)=0,out=1,(last,r(0))=$c(255)
      i '$l($zro) s d=1,d(1)="" q

    • As the guy who manages GT.M, let me assert that the licensing of GT.M as released on Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm [sourceforge.net]) is GPL.

      There is very little of GT.M that is written in assembler, but since GT.M is a compiler, the code generator is the real obstacle to portability. The assembler bits are mostly there to do things like manipulate stack frames, which a run time system needs to do.

      Feel free to contact me at ks dot bhaskar at fnf dot com if you have any questions on this.
  • I was hoping it was something the average open source hacker could work on... like PHP, or J2EE/JavaEE... but when I saw the list of components [worldvista.org]... uh OK.
    • You want to put PHP/Java into a life-or-death critical system? Not only do these languages likely explicitly disallow this behavior since it would likely open them up to litigation, but it would probably be really bad when the Java VM or some PHP lib bug causes the failure of the system. If you look closely at the agreements of just about large software you install (Windows if you swing that way), you'll probably see a list of things disallowed. I believe Windows 2000 or XP explicitly disallowed it being pu

  • Bad news for my company ... (maybe) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:37PM (#13136372)
    This could potentially be bad news for the company I work at. We deliver an enterprise-class medical software suite, known for integrating all the labwork, billing, nursing, ordering, scheduling, etc., systems into a single architecture. The thing costs several millions of dollars, though.

    Some clients seem to like it because it gives you seamless operation through your entire organization, and others don't like it because it's a huge monolithic piece of software, and represents TONS of vendor lock-in.

    I wish the execs up top here would realize that in this day in age, open standards like XML and now open source applications like this pose a huge threat to their business model, whose only strong point is that you get a highly integrated system (we're like the Microsoft of healthcare IT, basically).

    Oh well. I'm just one lowly developer. What can I do about it? I'd like to see my company succeed, but I worry that they're way too stuck in the 20th-century "lock them in", "monolithic application", "integration over interopability", "the only standard is a defacto one" -mindset.
  • ...since the download for OpenVista is 177 MB [sourceforge.net]. Hideous packaging, too - here's the contents of that file:
    $ ls -l
    total 1132
    drwxr-xr-x 2 tom tom 4096 Jul 22 12:44 g
    drwxr-xr-x 2 tom tom 581632 Jun 28 11:32 o
    drwxr-xr-x 2 tom tom 561152 Jun 21 18:23 r
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 tom tom 3576 Jun 21 18:37 vista
    The "o" and "r" directories have 23K files each in them. Bizarre.
    • Sourceforge aint crying, but their mirrors might be...

      > The "o" and "r" directories have 23K files
      > each in them. Bizarre.

      Not really odd at all, a quick look told me that the o directory contains the object files derived from compiling the source files in the r directory (.m aka mumps or M database files) ...

      Mumps is what vista is based on which is a database system that is available for free or commercially see http://www.mcenter.com/ [mcenter.com] for links to the free (go to link for m development committee)
      • > the o directory contains the object files

        Yup, it's a bunch of binaries:
        $ strings o/A1B2ADM.o
        GTM_CODE
        G(VW
        G(VW
        SlVW
        S<PADDI
        I guess it just looks a little odd... I'd expect to see them broken out into a directory hierarchy that mirrors a package or module structure. But perhaps M doesn't have a concept of such a thing?

  • linuxmednews.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by rkhalloran ( 136467 ) on Friday July 22, 2005 @12:58PM (#13136567) Homepage
    go to LinuxMedNews [linuxmednews.com], where Vista and its derivatives has been an ongoing discussion for some time. And given that it seems to be running Slashcode for the site, should be very familiar to the crowd here...
  • Glad to see this story got posted, even with my crappy submission.

    The NYT seems a little breathless IMHO, with how wonderful Medicare is to be giving software away. VistA was IIRC _always_ public domain, as it was written under contract to the VA, and also IIRC the VA (and the USG) has the copyright.
  • " The name "VistA" (Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture) dates back only to 1994, when the Under Secretary for Health of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Dr. Ken Kizer, renamed what had previously been known as the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP)."

    Heheh.

  • Wow (Score:4, Informative)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry@@@wayga...net> on Friday July 22, 2005 @01:14PM (#13136749) Journal
    I did the initial FOIA releases on CD back in 1993-1994. Most of my time was spent converting Word for Mac documentation to Word for Windows, RTF, and PS (and plain text IIRC). The easy stuff was actually getting the routines on a CD and burning it at 1x on a CD burner about the size of your desk. I think I still have a few releases kicking around my house.

    At the time, the idea was that companies would take the FOIA release (which had everything except encryption routines) and create their own release they would sell to hospitals.

    I remember getting some bloodwork a few months ago and seeing a computer screen with the familiar login screen for a MUMPS system.
  • I wonder if maybe the government should consider crafting its own open-source code for electronic voting machines to use as an backend engine for commercially produced machine..

  • There is other medical FOSS out there - GnuMed http://www.gnumed.org/ [gnumed.org] and OSCAR McMaster http://www.oscarhome.org/ [oscarhome.org] (or http://www.goemr.com/ [goemr.com] if you're in the USA) are two that come to mind off the top of my head.

    Debian-med has a fairly big list -- http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/ [debian.org]

    Euspirit http://www.euspirit.org/ [euspirit.org] had a huge list... but the site seems to have evaporated.

    I wrote a lengthy article about that FOSS in medicine-- it can be found here: http://www.utmj.org/issues/82.3/Technology_Rev [utmj.org]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Vista? (Score:2)

    by booch ( 4157 )
    Hmm. Looks like the Microsoft viral (astro-turf) campaign has already started. We learn that their upcoming version of Windows is to be called "Vista" [slashdot.org], and only a few hours later, we start getting Slashdot submissions talking about "Vista" this and "Vista" that.

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