About WorldVistA
was incorporated on March 18, 2002, as a non-profit corporation in the state of California, in the United States of America. It is a charitable organization approved by the US Internal Revenue Service under Section 501(c)(3) of the Federal Tax Code.
WorldVistA's mission is to improve healthcare worldwide by making medical information technology better and universally affordable.
Any doctor, nurse, or other healthcare provider caring for a patient anywhere in the world should have access to all relevant medical information about that patient and software support to help provide the best care possible. WorldVistA works to make that happen with a powerful, open-source, free medical software system called VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture). WorldVistA works to:
1) help physicians, clinics, and hospitals around the world learn, set up, and use VistA to improve medical care;
2) continuously develop VistA to meet the changing needs of patients, physicians, and other medical professionals.
Medicine is complex, variously practiced, and changes continuously, so:
1) the users of medical software need to help steer its development so thoroughly that they become partners, co-developers;
2) the software must be highly adaptable to local medical practices;
3) the software must change continuously to keep up with changes in medicine; and yet
4) the process of changing medical software must protect patient health and privacy.
Drawing on experience with medical software going back four decades, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) originally designed VISTA's 1) software structure, 2) support, 3) software lifecycle, 4) community organization, 5) expertise lifecycle, 6) management, and 7) economic relationships to make these things possible. WorldVistA works to adapt and extend the VA models and the values and principles on which they are based beyond the U.S. federal government. Only a system based on these principles can fulfill the promise of using computers to improve health for everyone, everywhere. WorldVistA intends to realize that dream.
