Documentation

OSEHRA provides the open source community with clear and accessible definitions of the components of the codebase, the manner which they function, and how they interact.  We provide initial documentation of existing architecture and regular updates, as needed.

VHA Related Documentation

As part of an effort to make their plans for development available to the open source community, VHA is providing the following documents:

Open Source EHR

  • VistA Documentation

The documentation of the existing architecture is a hybrid comprised of legacy and modernized applications, services, and data repositories.  The VistA codebase is a living, dynamic environment gradually evolving from a MUMPS to a Java based platform, and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Documentation associated with VistA modules includes:

  1. VA Software Document Library (VDL) 
  2. VistA Monograph on the Internet 
  3. VA FOIA site for VistA codebase Library
  4. VHA Enterprise Architecture: VHA developed an Enterprise Architecture that provides a technical framework to promote a one technology vision across the Department so that all systems are interoperable.
  5. Public facing Virtual Office of Acquisition (VOA) portal: VA Software Development Standards for VistA
  6. Public facing Virtual Office of Acquisition (VOA) portal: VA Interface Control Registrations (ICRs)
  7. VistA/CPRS Product Demo: A good representation of  the VistA product.
  8. One-VA TRM, which includes the Standards Profile and Product List, collectively serve as a technology roadmap and as a tool for supporting Office of Information & Technology (OIT).
  9. SOAP-style web service consumption used by HealtheVet XOBW
  10. REST-style web service consumption, used by HealtheVet XOBW
  11. GT.M Administration and Operations Guide
  12. Caché documentation
  13. Corporate Databases Monograph: The Corporate Database Monograph provides an overview of the active VHA national databases. Information contained in this monograph allows stakeholders to identify opportunities for database consolidations, determine authoritative data sources, and work with VHA Data Quality committees to implement data standardization and quality control processes for corporate databases.
  14. VA Information Technology Strategic Plans:
  15. VA eHealth University (VeHU) is VA’s major annual training conference that provides education on the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) and related clinical software (VistA) developed by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
  16. Capital Investment Planning:  Planned IT capital asset expenditures that exceed $10 million acquisition or $30 million life cycle costs, or have high levels of risk or visibility, must apply to the Capital Investment Board for approval. The VA Capital Investment Board (VACIB) oversees the approval of all capital investment proposals that exceed certain threshold requirements, represent a high risk or high visibility or are cross-cutting. Approved proposals constitute the VA Capital Plan and support annual budget requests.
  17. User, Technical, Programmer Manuals (va.gov/vdl) 
  18. Patch descriptions (downloads.va.gov)
  19. VistA Modernization Report Legacy to Leadership (2010) 
  • OSEHRA System Architecture Reference

OSEHRA's website will also contain a VistA System Architecture (SA) tool-generated HTML-navigable VistA SA model.  The VistA SA model will be both a tool and documentation based-on and including links-to the VistA documentation library.  The VistA SA tool will contain architectural artifacts, including but-not-limited to:

  1. VistA  Components modeled as UML classes, showing
  2. Component descriptions and functions
  3. Component-to-component dependencies
  4. Component-to-data dependencies
  5. Appropriate Links to VistA Documentation Library
  • OSEHRA Visual Cross Reference 

OSEHRA Visual Cross Reference documentation is generated with the results of XINDEX and FileMan Data Dictionary utility running against the VistA code base pulled from the repository.  This documentation provides direct dependency information among packages, among FileMan files, between globals and routines, as well as direct call/caller graphs and source code for individual routine.