OSEHRA Welcomes Medsphere Systems Corporation as Newest Corporate Member

ARLINGTON, VA, May 01, 2012

OSEHRA, the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record (EHR) software, is pleased to announce Medsphere Systems Corporation, a leading provider of open source healthcare IT solutions and services, has agreed to join as the newest corporate member of the nonprofit organization.

"OSEHRA is pleased that Medsphere has officially joined our ongoing effort to effectively develop interoperable health IT solutions for the benefit of the collective whole," said DaCosta Barrow, chief operating officer of OSEHRA. "Medsphere's code convergence and tool development experience will raise the collaboration level of the entire project and will have exponential benefits for the open source community creating an affordable EHR alternative for hospitals and clinics."

OSEHRA, which has been initially funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), has established a framework for users, developers, service providers, researchers, academia, industry and government to communicate, collaborate, and share information to improve and maintain EHR systems. Deployed OSEHRA capabilities include online code repository and review sites, software quality and certification dashboards, community engagement tools and educational resources.

"Medsphere shares the VA's vision of a self-sustaining open source health IT ecosystem as a counterbalance to the exceedingly costly proprietary solutions that most hospitals cannot afford. We're very excited and honored to be a part of OSEHRA and to contribute our real-world experience converging code and implementing VistA-based EHR solutions," said Medsphere President and CEO Irv Lichtenwald. "With regard to healthcare improvement and IT, there must be affordable alternatives for the thousands of hospitals and clinics in America that, while operating on very thin margins, still serve as the only local sources of care."

Medsphere's enrollment will allow the OSEHRA community to benefit from its long history of code convergence and open source development of VistA-derived health IT systems. While developing OpenVista , a comprehensive EHR solution, Medsphere has also made software code and associated development tools available to the open source community, with more than 15,000 software downloads to date.

The OSEHRA platform is a transparent, rapid and safe way to accelerate creation of an ever improving, and highly functional EHR for the beneficiaries of VA healthcare, and more broadly, the nation as a whole. Codebase improvements developed by the OSEHRA community are available thru a free Apache 2 license to its over 800 authenticated users in academia, industry and government.

Contact:
Seong K. Mun, PhD
President and CEO
571-858-3205
munsk@osehra,org

About OSEHRA, Inc.

OSEHRA is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to facilitate, through the use of the best practices in open source (OS) business processes, the development and continuous improvement of EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems. These systems will be freely available for all members of the community of developers, users, vendors and service providers.

About Medsphere and OpenVista

Founded in 2002 and based in Carlsbad, Calif., Medsphere Systems Corporation is an award-winning organization of clinical and technology professionals working to make quality health IT solutions accessible to organizations of virtually any size, shape or budget. Medsphere's OpenVista is a portfolio of clinical support products and professional services that leverages an EHR system developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service. VistA is widely credited with helping transform the VA into the nation's most efficient and clinically effective healthcare organization. Medsphere also actively nurtures the Healthcare Open Source Ecosystem, a global community of customers, partners, developers and other online collaborators who drive OpenVista innovation, and provide a parallel development and support structure. For more information see: Medsphere.com, YouTube.com/MedsphereCorp, Facebook.com/Medsphere, or @Medsphere on Twitter.