WorldVistA Past Executives
K.S. Bhaskar, Former Director,
President
Bhaskar is President of YottaDB LLC, in Malvern,
Pennsylvania, where he manages the YottaDB software. (YottaDB on
Linux is an open-source implementation of MUMPS and is part of the
open-source free software stack for VistA.) By training and
inclination he is an engineer, with degrees in electrical
engineering and computer science, although he also holds a masters
in business administration. He holds five U.S. patents, has
written a number of technical articles, and has presented at
technical conferences. He cofounded WorldVistA, serving as
director from March 1, 2003 to March 14, 2004, and rejoined the
board October 20, 2005, before retiring June 1, 2009.
Peter Bodtke, Former Treasurer and Vice President
Peter
is a senior business analyst. He received a Master of Science
Information Systems from Steven Institute of Technology where he studied
information management and project management. Active in the VistA
community since 2006, his contributions to WorldVistA range from
delivery manager of the VistA Demo Appliance to preparing press releases
and marketing collateral. Other activities include: coordinating the
community public conference calls, managing membership services and
supporting community meetings.
Peter Groen, Former Vice President
Government Liaison
Peter recently retired from the
Veterans Health Administration (VHA), U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA). He was the Director of the Health Information and
Technology Sharing (HITS) program. He served in the federal
government for over 33 years and occupied a number of senior
Information Technology (IT) management positions within VA
Headquarters and in the field. He served as the Director of the
Medical Information Security Service, Director of VHA
Telecommunications Services, Deputy Associate CIO for the Veterans
Health Administration, as well as the Chief Information Officer (CIO)
at the VA Medical Centers in Atlanta and Columbia S.C. He served as
the national project manager for the VA Computerized Patient Record
System (CPRS) as well as the VA Internet and VHA Intranet Redesign
projects. Prior to coming to the VA, he also served in the U.S. Navy
for six years. He was a supervisor of the Combat Information Center
aboard the guided missile destroyer, U.S.S. Sellers DDG-11. He
obtained his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from Clemson University
and a Masters of Public Administration (M.P.A.) from The Pennsylvania
State University. During his long federal career, he received
numerous awards for outstanding performance and special
contributions. He served five years as an adjunct faculty instructor
at the University of South Carolina and is currently on the faculty
of the Computer & Information Sciences Department at Shepherd
University in West Virginia. He has been published in a number of
journals and books over the years, primarily with a focus on
information technology in healthcare.
Matt King, Former Chairman
Matthew King, MD is the Chief Medical
Officer of Clinica Adelante, Inc, a community health center in the
Phoenix, Arizona area. He obtained his Medical Degree from University
of Washington, School of Medicine in 1989. He is board-certified in
Family Medicine and completed his internship and residency at the
Ventura County Family Medicine Residency Program. Before accepting
the Clinica Position, Dr. King practiced a full spectrum of Family
Practice in Okanogan, Washington, including Hospital and ER care,
Obstetrics, Geriatrics and Pediatrics. Dr. King has been a computer
hobbyist and open source advocate for many years and has experience
with the Linux operating system, MySql, OpenOffice.org, Python and
Perl. More recently, he has studied VistA and GT.M. In August 2007,
Clinica Adelante, Inc, successfully brought WorldVistA EHR into
production, using Linux and GT.M. His passion is using technology to
improve Healthcare quality and patient outcomes.”
Art Koga, Former Director
Art was the President and CEO of Blue
Cliff, Inc., a software consultant and development company providing
support to healthcare providers, institutions, and companies with the
installation, configuration and customization of electronic medical
records and project management/cost accounting system. He had over
twenty years of experience with the electronic information services
industry, was the Director of Telehealth Projects at the Pacific
Telehealth and Technology Hui and served as the Executive Director of
the Hawaii Information Network Corporation. His professional
experiences included over twenty-five years of experience in
government as an educator and administrator with the Hawaii State
Department of Education, Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of
Education, and Legislative Analyst at the Hawaii State Legislature. In the mid 1980’s, he began training in Zen and served as the
President of the Institute of Zen Studies in Hawaii.
Chuck Link, Former Board Member
Chuck Link is a Contracting Officer
Technical Representative for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
working at the field office in Birmingham, Alabama. He has been a
member of the VistA community for twenty years, and spent nine of
those years working on VistA’s Pharmacy applications. He is one of
the Hardhats Volunteers, and served on the MUMPS Development
Committee (MDC) for ten years. Link served as chairman of the MDC’s
Subcommittee 16 (Object-Oriented Language), and in that role led a
working group in its biweekly conference calls and quarterly
meetings, out of which grew the OpenVistA project and WorldVistA
itself. He works at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’s Field
Office in Birmingham, Alabama. Link was one of the founders of
WorldVistA, and later served as a Director of WorldVistA during 2003.
Rick Marshall, Former Chief Technical
Officer, Director
Is a VistA consultant in Seattle,
Washington and has been programming VistA since 1984. He formerly
served as a VistA computer specialist with the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA): seven years of local support and development
and twelve years of national development, including major work on
both the TaskMan and FileMan packages for VistA. He has also written
technical documents, including the 1995 Standard M Pocket Guide, and
taught classes in FileMan and Kernel for more than a decade. He was a
director of the M Technology Association for four years and vice
chair of the MUMPS Development Committee, served as WorldVistA
President, and cofounded WorldVistA.
Bob Miller, Former Board Member
Dr. Miller was an associate professor of pathology
and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and director of its pathology data systems unit. He was a member of the WorldVistA board from 2003 to 2005.
Stan Saiki, Former Board Member
Stanley Saiki was the Director of the
Pacific Telehealth and Technology Hui (Hui), at Tripler Army Medical
Center and the Director of Clinical Informatics at the VA Honolulu.
He spearheaded research projects related to data warehousing,
clinical telemedicine, and electronic medical record development. He
served as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of
Hawaii. In 1998 through 2000, he served as the Director of the
University of Hawaii Telemedicine Project where he coauthored the UH
Telemedicine Curriculum. He also authored database
applications. In his role as Director of the Hui, he helped fund the
development of OpenVistA, and later served as a Director of
WorldVistA during 2004.
Kevin Toppenberg, Former Director
Kevin is a family physician in private practice in Greeneville,
Tennessee. His received his medical degree from Loma Linda University
in Loma Linda, California. Residency training in Family Medicine was
at Florida Hospital in Orlando, Florida, followed by a fellowship in FP
Obstetrics, also at Florida Hospital. He has a long-term interest in
computer science, and has turned to VistA as a medical records solution
for his office practice. He has installed, supported, and extended
VistA for over five years with active daily use. He is a private CPRS
developer using Delphi Pascal and has created the TMG-CPRS product. He
also works with server-side Mumps code development and offers
occasional contract programming services for VistA. His vision is for
VistA to be widely available to physicians in small office practices
for an affordable amount. This segment of the medical community has
traditionally underserved, as for-profit corporations pass them by and
target lucrative hospital contracts.
John Leo Zimmer, Former Secretary