medsphere news from FierceHealthIT

Despite touting the merits of government influence on healthcare, former Medsphere CEO Ken Kizer--who was integral in pushing electronic health records at the Department of Veteran's Affairs in the Read more...

Hard to believe--and we'd like to see some more proof ourselves--but a California hospital claims that it is the first in the country to download the VA's VistA EMR software and tailor the Read more...

Medsphere Systems Corp. and its two co-founders settled their suits against each other this week, drawing an end to an odd saga in which the founders were sued for sharing open-source software with Read more...

Last, but definitely not least, there's obviously still going to be activity around EMRs, but this isn't your father's Oldsmobile. While I'm at HIMSS, I think it will be smart to hit the booths of few EMR and clinical data management vendors, particularly those that I think have a chance to make disruptive changes in the business.

For example, I'm personally intrigued by Medsphere's commercial, Open Source implementation of the accolade-winning VistA platform created for the VA. Vendors such as eClinicalWorks and Wellogic are doing something worthwhile, in that their technology can merge EMR on practice management software, a model that could help give EMRs a footing in smaller practices with a slim budget. It's also worth checking out any hosted EMR models out there. All told, anything that integrates traditional EMRs (analogues of the paper record) with important additional sources of clinical information is worth a good, long look. And if it gets this done with an eye on automating clinical pathways, or creates a new business model making implementation cheap and easy for MDs, even better. Keep your eyes peeled, and I will too.

> So how much downtime did Kaiser's Epic EMR actually experience? To what extent was KP's Citrix infrastructure to blame? Check out this interview with Justen Deal--and some very lively follow-up commentary--to learn more. Blog

>  If this Associated Press report …

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Can open source save your life?
Well, that headline really throws down the gauntlet, but there just might be something to it. A former ER doctor has come up with something called Medsphere, built around the VA's VistA (see Editor's Corner), to make electronic health records more accessible. The goal (and it no longer sounds so far-fetched) is to build a National Health Care Information Infrastructure based on open standards. Blog