Re: Installing VistA
On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 22:36, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Andrew Ho wrote:
>
> > Is anyone working on the VistA Debian package?
> > Any progress since July?
> >
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2002/debian-med-200207/msg00033.html
> Unfortunately I've got no further reply on this issue despite the
> answers available in this thread.
>
> I would really love if somebody would step in here. Perhaps we should
> start with packaging of GT.M.
Now that I have a better (but still very superficial) insight into the
nature of the VistA beast, I can understand why no-one has replied.
VistA is a vast, sprawling collection of modules each resting on shared
infrastructure. The shared infrastructure needs a _lot_ of
configuration, even for a demo system - things like system, hospital,
ward, team and individual identifiers and lots of system-wide and user
default value to make data entry faster. There don't seem to be defaults
for these default values (or maybe there are, if you are M-savvy
enough). Then you have to choose which of the modules (seems like there
are around 100 odd to choose from) you want to use, and how they relate
to each other. Then you have to configure each module. Automating all of
this with "Debian demo" values would be a serious feat of
post-installation configuration scripting.
Certainly packaging GT.M and the various VistA distributions for Debian
would help a bit, but not that much. Using Todd Smith's instructions, it
took me about an hour from go-to-whoa to install (but not configure)
GT.M and VistA, and that includes about 20 minutes sucking the (large)
files across the Pacific, and another 20 minutes waiting for the VistA
distribution to unpack itself (within MUMPS - the unzipping of the
distribution files only takes seconds). So you might save 20 or 30
minutes of time. But then the would-be punter would still be faced with
the task of configuring VistA, and it looks to me like that could take
many hours, days or weeks.
However, both GT.M and VistA sit pretty lightly on the underlying
operating system - basically everything seems to be contained under one
subdirectory for GT.M (/usr/local/gtm) and another for VistA
(/usr/local/vista_gtm), plus a few environment variables. So, if you can
find an already-configured VistA demo system, then it would seem
feasible to just create a tarball for each of those two subdirectories.
Untarring those on a target system and setting the environment variables
would be all that is required to bring up a configured demo system.
Perhaps that's what everyone had in mind, anyway. Of course, such an
installation would only be useful for demonstrating VistA (since it
would share user names, ID codes and passwords with all other instances
of itself), not for actually using VistA in patient care. But first you
need to locate an already configured VistA demo installation. Does
anyone have one in captivity?
On the subject of readily-accessible VistA demos, someone asked if a
Web-enabled version of VistA was available. An alternative would be to
set up the terminal-mode interface (basically any VT-100 emulator) as
well as the GUI CPRS and Imaging front-ends on a Windows box (the GUIs
are Windows-only, I think) connected to the Internet, with the VistA
back-end on a Linux box connected to the Windows box. VNCserver would be
installed on the Windows box, which would allow authorised users to play
with the demo system from the comfort of their own Linux, Unix or
Windows machines, possibly on the other side of the world, using the VNC
client. The VNC "remote control" technology is fast enough to work quite
well across many broadband Internet connections. Obviously would-be
users of the demo system would need to register with the demo system
provider, and probably book a session on it. Both the VNC server and
client are free open source software which run on Linux, Unix and
Windows, and the client is very easy to install - it is a single
executable file. Who might be motivated to set up such a facility? Well,
possibly service providers hoping to make a living out of configuring
and supporting VistA? Once word got out, hospital IT managers and
clinical informaticists from around the world would be clamouring for
their turn on the VistA demo system, perhaps just out of curiosity -
nevertheless, for the system integration agency it would be a great way
to get exposure and to get "sales" leads.
Tim C
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