Misys Open Source Solutions (“MOSS”), a division of Misys plc, the world’s first fully open source, standards based health information exchange solutions provider, has succeeded in passing the stringent IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) testing protocols at the Chicago Connectathon. This extends MOSS success in passing all the IHE tests for the last 4 years.

The MOSS HIE is built to be compliant with existing national standards. The fundamental objective of the Misys Connect™ Exchange platform is to provide a secure infrastructure to exchange patient health information in order to advance the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare delivery through the coordination of care between community participants. The platform is a critical element of the HIE infrastructure that provides clinicians and other members of the healthcare community with the right information at the right time by making patient information available across organizational boundaries. It facilitates and streamlines the sharing of patient information throughout an HIE community.

During the IHE Connectathon, held in Chicago earlier this month, certifiers reviewed and passed each profile that MOSS had tested. This year, those components included:

•     Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS Registry and Repository)
•     Cross Community Patient Discovery (XCPD)

Previously certified components from MOSS that comply with IHE profiles include Patient Identifier Cross-Reference and Patient Demographic Query (PIX/PDQ), Audit Trail Node Authentication (ATNA), and Document Metadata Subscription (DSUB) along with Cross-Community Access (XCA) and Cross-User Authentication (XUA).

The Misys Connect™ Exchange, which is the collection of the open source assets, is the first fully open source exchange offered anywhere in the world. The software is offered under the commercially friendly Apache v. 2.0 license. MOSS offers fully supported versions as part of the enterprise offerings.

“This is 4th consecutive year for MOSS at IHE Connectathon.” said Konda Mullapudi, Director of Development at Misys. “Health Information Exchange is the next big thing in health information technology and will enable all the disparate EHR and EMR systems to work together so that coordination-of-care at the community-level will become achievable. Having our components certified at the Connectathon demonstrates that we conform to all the standards. By leveraging our open source community, we are able to keep our costs lower and pass on that value to our customers. And having Connectathon certification shows that our components are just as good as any proprietary vendor.”

Medsphere Systems Corporation and Kern Medical Center have announced that Kern has met the requirements for Stage One Meaningful Use with Medsphere’s OpenVista system, the enabling electronic health record (EHR), and has received more than $5 million in initial reimbursement from the federal government.

Affiliated with both the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UC Irvine School of Medicine, county-owned Kern Medical Center cares for more than 16,000 patients annually and includes affiliated clinics that cover more than 100,000 patients. The 222-bed central California teaching hospital ultimately expects to receive in excess of $11 million, covering the initial investment in OpenVista, from the federal government over the life of the Meaningful Use reimbursement program established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“Imagine that every county hospital in the United States chose the same responsible path as Kern Medical Center. Local taxpayers would enjoy better care and save millions compared to the cost of other EHR systems,” said Medsphere President and CEO Irv Lichtenwald. “And all county hospitals could be connected and sharing patient records and valuable best practices. Kern and CEO Paul Hensler deserve credit for leading the way among publicly supported hospitals, and Medsphere congratulates them on receiving federal funds.”

DSS, Inc., the leading provider of software development and support of VistA, today announced that its vxVistA and vxMental Health Suite (MHS) have gone into production at University Behavioral Healthcare (UBHC), a division of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), with more than 800 users at 13 locations.

UBHC is one of the largest providers of behavioral health services in the country and includes an extensive network of inpatient and outpatient clinics. UBHC selected DSS’ mental health EHR to streamline and standardize its clinical documentation processes and related workflow in order to further improve the quality of care given to patients.

“We are extremely pleased by the smooth, successful launch of vxVistA and vxMHS. It can be a challenge to find software that supports efficient, quality care without putting added stress on clinicians. This successful launch reflects how the DSS system conformed to address our needs,” said Chris Kosseff, CEO of UBHC and Senior Vice President of UMDNJ. “In addition, the close collaboration between our focused team and the expertise of DSS helped to prepare our staff for the transition.”

DSS was chosen by UBHC’s review committee during an open bid process in April 2010. The Mental Health Suite was designed to meet the specialty-specific needs of mental health patients by allowing clinicians to create, edit and view interdisciplinary treatment plans while meeting governing organizational standards. In addition, the solution will allow clinicians to:

• improve patient safety through the documentation and tracking of long-term treatments and evidence-based psychotherapies;
• enhance communication across the continuum of care with real-time updates on clinical and group notes; and
• increase organizational efficiencies by customizing the system to establish UBHC standards, including preferred authorization tracking and reporting needs.

“This partnership marks the largest implementations of vxMHS in the country, and UBHC’s unique vision for safer and more robust delivery of mental and behavioral healthcare is inspiring,” said Mark Byers, President and CEO of DSS. “We feel this project further supports our ongoing dedication to deliver one-of-a-kind, customizable EHR solutions to specialists with distinct healthcare requirements such as behavioral health providers.”

As a long-term goal, UBHC plans to turn the mental health EHR integration into a statewide administrative service organization (ASO), offering hospitals and smaller behavioral health clinics a cost-effective infrastructure through which they can easily document, store and access clinical information. UBHC strives to bring greater mental health care accessibility and continuity of care to residents statewide–especially to those with severe mental illness or without the resources to afford treatment.

The vxMHS software integrates seamlessly with vxVistA, an open source platform based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs proven VistA EHR foundation, as well as the billing software UBHC selected for the implementation, Stockell Healthcare Systems, Inc.

PHYAURA, LLC has announced the launch of the community edition of PHYAURA EHR, a free and open source EHR product.  The community edition allows all healthcare practitioners in the United States to document clinical notes, schedule office visits, and bill for medical services, all without any vendor lock in. PHYAURA has also established a new open source healthcare community to bring professional technology companies and users together for enhanced collaboration.

“We’re pleased to provide not only free software but an open source healthcare community where physicians can interact with other users and share their technology experiences. The healthcare IT industry is changing and many vendors who are charging physicians exorbitant fees for implementation and support will find it difficult to remain competitive in the next couple of years,” said Jude A. Pierre, MD, Managing Partner.

The PHYAURA community and open source software was built to create a collaborative platform for healthcare practitioners, developers, vendors and staff members aimed at improving the healthcare technology experiences and ultimately patient care. The PHYAURA community is a quick and easy way to read answers to commonly asked questions and post questions that have not already been addressed.

PHYAURA has partnered with key industry experts to provide solutions that supplement the community edition. Paid services such as e-prescribing, lab interfaces, and training add to the ongoing development of PHYAURA EHR. In addition, healthcare providers wanting to receive federal funding can sign up for PHYAURA’s online meaningful use version.

The PHYAURA EHR’s  community edition is ready to manage and includes:

• Practice scheduler
• Medical Billing and practice management software
• Note writer
• Superbill generator
• Daily journal for front office close outs
• Document repository
• Sync up data with OpenEMR
• Full control of your data
• Electronic remittance
• Claims management
• Referral Module

The site also includes a community forum that to date is fairly lightly used.

PHYAURA was founded by practicing physicians as a company dedicated to providing physicians with the resources, services, and HIPAA-compliant communication tools that merge the best practices of modern medicine with state of the art technologies of the 21st century.

Phyaura, LLC, a healthcare technology firm, has acquired EHR Live, LLC, a West Palm Beach company that shares PHYAURA’s focus on developing ‘open source’ Electronic Health Records (EHR) solutions in full compliance with government regulations.

“With this acquisition, PHYAURA increases its user base and provides current EHR Live clients access to our complete ‘meaningful use’ software, PHYAURA EHR v.4.0,” said Jude A. Pierre, M.D., Managing Partner, Phyaura, LLC.

“Our EHR system was created by physicians for physicians and is cost effective as there is no software to purchase. Use of the service and all associated upgrades may be accessed via the web for free,” Pierre added. PHYAURA’s web based EHR has a fully integrated, user friendly practice management system and is available to all EHR Live clients without interruption of services.

Chris Lucena, M.B.A. and president of EHR Live, will join PHYAURA’s team as Chief Technology Officer.

“We are thrilled to be joining PHYAURA thereby bringing our two companies together in a strategic move to provide quality healthcare IT and EHR services at affordable rates. Physicians want choices with our ‘open source’ products along with better service and training,” said Lucena.

Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of open-source healthcare enterprise solutions, today announced complete electronic health record (EHR) certification in inpatient settings for the company’s OpenVista electronic health record. Certification by InfoGard confirms that Medsphere customers using OpenVista are enabled to meet “meaningful use” standards and maximize federal assistance.

“The significance for Medsphere customers of OpenVista certification is clear but can’t be overstated. Our customers can be certain that the solution they chose will get them to meaningful use and federal funding,” said Medsphere President and CEO Mike Doyle. “More broadly, InfoGard certification of OpenVista also demonstrates that there are many more ways to meaningful use than through expensive, confining proprietary vendors. Open source can get you to meaningful use quickly, affordably, reliably and without the unnecessary baggage that proprietary systems bring.”

Of course, hospitals can’t meet federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding requirements if clinicians won’t use the system. Brooklyn’s Lutheran Medical Center has reached 93 percent physician adoption of OpenVista for computerized provider order entry. Similarly, Silver Hill Hospital, a nationally recognized psychiatric facility in New Canaan, Conn, has achieved 98 percent physician adoption of CPOE.

Midland Memorial Hospital, a HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 facility, effectively and rapidly moved the majority of physicians to electronic ordering within 90 days of their go live event in 2006.

“The adoptability and intuitive nature of the system is one of the reasons we were comfortable moving forward with OpenVista in the first place,” explained David Whiles, director of information systems at Midland Memorial. “The affordability is very important, of course, but it wouldn’t matter if the system didn’t provide closed-loop medication management and other attributes that improve clinical workflow and patient care.”

For hospitals that have not yet implemented an EHR, the certification of OpenVista is equally significant. Now that federal payments have begun, OpenVista is the certified solution that is adoptable, highly affordable, proven and can be implemented quickly enough to still maximize federal stimulus payments as soon as possible.

InfoGard also gave modular EHR certification in ambulatory environments to OpenVista.

Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of open-source healthcare enterprise solutions, today announced the addition of Richard B. “Rick” Toren to the company’s board of directors. Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Rick has consistently met health and healthcare challenges with a blend of technological creativity and sound business acumen.

Rick’s experience and perspective are uncommonly broad. He has built and run companies and corporate divisions, and he has also succeeded in the tedious detail work of health and healthcare product development.

“Rick Toren’s resume illustrates quite clearly why Medsphere is honored to welcome him to the board,” said Medsphere President and CEO Mike Doyle. “On both strategic and tactical levels, his skill set is matched by few individuals in the health IT industry. We’re confident his contributions to the board will be effective and enduring.”

In Medsphere, Rick saw an opportunity to contribute to a project that combines two of his primary values.

“Anyone who knows me knows that I get involved with projects that make a positive social impact and have a strong likelihood of success,” Toren said. “I see in Medsphere the opportunity to serve hospitals of all shapes, sizes and specialties. Medsphere and OpenVista’s unique pricing model allows hospitals to deploy an outstanding and proven EHR regardless of financial strength.”

Rick currently serves as chairman and president of CodeRyte, Inc., a technology firm that automates billing code extraction.

For a full bio on Rick Toren, click here.

Harris Corporation (NYSE: HRS), an international communications and information technology company, has been awarded a contract by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to continue providing advanced software engineering and enterprise support to the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) Imaging System.  This multi-year contract was originally awarded to Harris in August 2008.

The VistA Imaging System is an enterprise-wide information system that integrates clinical images, scanned documents, and other non-textual data into a patient’s electronic medical record, as well as providing long-term storage.  VistA Imaging combines traditional clinical information with images of all kinds, including X-rays, pathology slides, cardiology motion views, wound photos, dental and dermatology-related images, medical data in standard video formats, and any type of scanned document needed to complete a patient’s chart.  The system works in all federated computing architectures, enabling it to be used in multi-vendor imaging environments without the need for  custom interfaces – ensuring interoperability and reliable data exchange.

“VistA Imaging provides clinicians with the information they need at the point of care to deliver quality treatment for our Veterans,” said Jim Traficant, vice president and general manager, Harris Healthcare Solutions.  ”Harris is proud to support the VA as the agency continues to enhance one of the most widely used medical imaging software applications in the world.”

VistA Imaging is one of the world’s most comprehensive and widely implemented medical Picture Archival and Communications Systems (PACSs) available today, supporting both conventional and telehealth-based healthcare delivery.  Each month, the system serves more than 1.3 million patients, captures more than 35 million new images, displays more than nine million images for review, displays more than 500,000 studies for diagnosis, and is used to interpret more than 160,000 studies.

Since the original award in 2008, VistA Imaging has achieved the following:

• Continuing to modernize computerized patient records with attachments and medical images
• Improving medical imaging capability through integration with legacy VistA Imaging System
• Expanding data sharing between Department of Defense (DoD) and VA
• Transitioning VA hospitals and medical facilities to an enterprise-wide paperless and filmless Electronic Health Record, and
• Improving the centralization of veterans’ health records with VistA Imaging as a single source of record