Medsphere Provides Enhanced Functionality and Crucial Interoperability in OpenVista 2.0

Meds Application, an Integral Part of OpenVista 2.0, To Be Showcased at HIMSS

CARLSBAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of Open Source healthcare IT solutions, today announced significant enhancements and upgrades to OpenVista, the company’s flagship electronic health record (EHR). The improvements to OpenVista, based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA system, bring the EHR in line with the expectations of the commercial healthcare market without escalating the cost.

“The OpenVista 2.0 Meds Application is only the first of many improvements Medsphere is making to the VistA system, demonstrating our commitment to providing healthcare with an affordable, interoperable alternative”

As the first in a series of modular OpenVista 2.0 upgrades, the OV Meds Application provides clinicians with enhanced medication reconciliation, advanced pharmacy functionality with a pharmacy dashboard, a pricing engine and a patient drug information library. Combined, these enhancements will ultimately improve patient safety through fewer medication errors and adverse reactions, and they will increase productivity by improving work flow.

Medsphere’s improved OV Meds Application will be on display at the Medsphere booth (#7027) at the upcoming Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference from April 4-8 in Chicago.

The OV Meds Application now incorporates an intuitive, user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) with tabbed workspaces. This enables users to multitask under a single login. As part of the application, Medsphere also introduces a pharmacy dashboard that monitors patient records and alerts nurses and medical staff to certain events such as stat orders and user alerts.

The OpenVista 2.0 pharmacy pricing engine helps facilities determine pricing rules for different categories of drugs and provides the information from the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS), which hospitals need to submit Medicare claims. The OV Meds Application also includes the capability to load Patient Medication Information Sheet (PMIS) warning data from the industry standard First DataBank (FDB) National Drug Data File (NDDF).

“The OpenVista 2.0 Meds Application is only the first of many improvements Medsphere is making to the VistA system, demonstrating our commitment to providing healthcare with an affordable, interoperable alternative,” said Michael J. Doyle, president and CEO of Medsphere.

The debut of OpenVista 2.0 comes at a significant time for healthcare. Aside from reducing preventable medical errors and improving patient care, U.S. hospitals and physicians are scrambling to become automated and be eligible for nearly $20 billion in Medicare/Medicaid payments (stimulus funding made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) for the adoption of electronic health records. From 2011, stimulus incentive payments decrease annually over the following five years, when they will be phased out entirely.

“Realistically, Medsphere is the only company that can bring hospitals live before January 2011, making them eligible for full funding through the federal stimulus legislation,” Doyle said.

OpenVista is the commercialized version of the VistA EHR created and developed by the VA over more than 20 years and credited with helping turn the agency into a national leader in quality patient care. OpenVista technology uses Open Source code available from the VA through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Medsphere implements and supports the technology and works collaboratively on updates, enhancements and modifications with the Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem, a community of healthcare facilities, developers, value-added resellers, clinicians and other interested parties dedicated to improving patient care through Open Source tools.

OpenVista last year enabled Midland Memorial Hospital in west Texas to be named a HIMSS Analytics Stage 6 facility for 1/3 the cost and in 1/3 the time of alternative solutions. Through the Stage 6 designation, HIMSS Analytics recognizes healthcare facilities that have implemented healthcare IT solutions and achieved established levels of automated patient care and clinical process improvement.

About Medsphere and OpenVista

As a disruptive force in healthcare information technology, Medsphere is revolutionizing the industry by delivering commercially supported Open Source software based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ proven VistA EHR. The product of 20-plus years of development and more than $8 billion invested, VistA enabled the transformation of the VA into the nation’s most efficient and clinically effective healthcare organization. Currently VistA contains roughly 2.1 billion clinical documents, 2.76 billion orders, and 1.51 billion images. As the commercialized version of VistA, Medsphere’s OpenVista is a portfolio of products and professional services for hospitals, clinics and integrated delivery networks. OpenVista is currently used by over 20,000 individuals, including 2,500 physicians and contains hundreds of thousands of medical records. Medsphere addresses healthcare’s capital constraints through an innovative business model:

• A unique subscription-based pricing model minimizes upfront costs.
• The Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem and Medsphere.org portal coordinate a unique grassroots community of customers/subscribers, partners and developers driving OpenVista innovation and providing a parallel development and support structure.
• Medsphere's experienced team of healthcare technology professionals and unique suite of implementation tools deliver a fluid transition to a comprehensive healthcare information technology solution.

Founded in 2002, Medsphere is backed financially by Azure Capital Partners, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners and EPIC Ventures (formerly the Wasatch Venture Fund). Medsphere clients include Midland Memorial Hospital, Midland, Texas; West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (WV DHHR); Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, Rock Springs, Wyoming; Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York; and the federal government’s Indian Health Service. For more information, visit http://www.medsphere.com and http://www.medsphere.org.