The basic program is called VistA; the name was chosen well before a Certain Other Company copied the move, and the code began life as an electronic health records system for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

There is always myths that surround the Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA Electronic Health Record. I have not found a compendium of these myths and the facts so I wrote this list. As well I was partially inspired by Fred Trotter's recent 'Antiquated or Proven?' response to a detractor of VistA. Please feel free to add to this list by replying below.

The Veterans Affairs Department sees advantages in using open-source software to modernize its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) system, but it anticipates several problems if it takes that step. The VA issued a request for information Aug. 11 asking for industry to deal with anticipated concerns related to open-source development for VistA.

In the past I’ve spoken highly of VistA, the Veteran’s Administration computerized health records system—and with good reason. VistA has a lot going for it. In 2006, it won an “Innovations in American Government Award” from Harvard. Studies show that use of VistA has improved VA productivity by 6 percent a year since national implementation was achieved in 1999.

In contrast with most of its competition, Damn Small Linux (DSL) is an operating system where megabytes are still meaningful. Compare that to Windows Vista’s minimum 20 gigabyte footprint and the line in the sand becomes obvious.

Some days ago I looked at the Kopete roadmap and saw that it was updated recently. It now states that full Decibel support won’t be there before KDE 4.2, but that Telepathy will be supported as a plugin in KDE 4.1

The Mozilla Project has updated its roadmap for the coming versions of Firefox. The next big release, Firefox 4.0 with Geko1.9.4 underneath, is scheduled for the end of 2010.

Recently, an early draft of a semi-unofficial art roadmap for the much-discussed GNOME 3.0 was proposed. Though nothing here is ground-breaking, it is the kind of thing we need. Here are a few of the interesting points from the roadmap:

Lakin Hospital, a long-term nursing facility operated by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, has adopted an open source electronic health record.