Dr. John Loonsk, CGI Chief Medical Office and CGI Initiative Fellow, lays out the promise of a redesigned VistA, not only for the VA but for other healthcare providers, both public and private. Dr. Loonsk, the former director of interoperability and standards at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), considers how best to leverage the VAs experiences across the healthcare industry. He outlines the importance of pairing doctors and other providers with software developers to ensure that the VistA redesign will meet the needs of providers and ultimately improve patient care.
Dr. Loonsk also emphasizes the importance of taking a modular approach to VistA redevelopment that will allow easy linkage with commercial health information systems. He underscores the consideration of setting and enforcing standards at all levels, ranging from technology and software all the way to standards of patient care, and he demonstrates just how complex a challenge the VA and the nation face in attempting to create broadly useful health information systems.
