Three developers split $3M in prize money for VistA scheduling software

Three winners will split more than $3 million in prize money offered by the Veterans Affairs Department to upgrade the scheduling software module of its VistA electronic health-record system.

The $1,825,000 first-prize winner is a consortium of MedRed, a Washington, D.C.-based software development company; BT Americas, an IT services company based in El Segundo, Calif.; and the VistA Expertise Network, a programmer's network based in Seattle. Its entry, Health eTime, has been under development since last fall solely for the contest, said Krishna Dave, contract manager for MedRed. Whether the software will become part of VistA, and whether it will be proprietary or free and open source has yet to be determined, Dave said. “We are waiting for some guidance from the VA on what the next steps are, whether there will be procurement,” she said.

Second place and $705,000 went to 113-bed Oroville (Calif.) Hospital, which has implemented an open-source version of VistA and previously developed an electronic prescribing module for the VistA system.

Third place and a $520,000 prize went to the HP Open Community Team, whose members include Chris Harrington, an executive at HP Enterprise Services, a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co.

The VA's current VistA module, the Medical Scheduling Package, “reads data from more than 130 other VistA applications and has read/write functionality with more than 30 additional applications,” according to the contest website.

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