VCM Fairfax 2011 PRE presentation

Please be aware that the time frames mentioned in the video may not match reality, since a lot can happen to schedules as time passes, but the presentation did mention these in 2011. Note there is also a description of this project at: http://www.itdashboard.gov/investment/project-summary/487

As I listened to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-raLs_Ps 20110524 - VCM - VistA Pharmacy Re-Engineering, I wrote up these notes:

The Pharmacy Re-Engineering code is written in J2EE (Java 2.0 Enterprise Edition) provides three main code bases. The first, Pharmacy Enterprise Control System (PECS) will be a graphical User user interface to update and maintain the drug Database. The second is a tool to provide a DATUP (Data Update) service between the PECS-maintained drug database and the Cache database used to store the First Databank data. The third uses that FDB data to provide a Medication Order check service (MOCHA).

VistA uses the proprietary Cache Web Services to access HWSC (HealtheVet Web Services Calls). XML (Extensible Markup Language) is used to communicate between MUMPS and Java. There are two web service calls to MOCHA from the MUMPS/VistA.

The VistA system converts its data into XML (computer speak: marshalling) to send a REST request to MOCHA, and receives XML back which is converted back into MUMPS (sometimes called de-marshalling). The two separate REST calls provide 1) order check calls and 2) new dosage checking calls. Drugs are matched up using the First Databank "GCNSEQNO " which is currently stored as an field in the National Drug File as part of the XML message to make sure that drugs in VistA can be matched up against

First Databank has a set of subroutines they call DIF - Drug Information Framework which are called by the MOCHA code, providing a level of abstraction that does NOT depend on First Databank's code, and could be replicated for a non-FDB database.

The National Drug File (NDF) Management System uses the NDDF CD (I think NDDF is from First Databank) for at least some of the information they are putting in the National Drug File, perhaps to confirm knowledge from other sources. This group is the "twenty or so" phamacists that build and confirm the.data sent as patches to the various VA hospitals. The NDF is scrubbed of any proprietary information from the NDDF before being sent out.

Timeline includes at least these significant points: At some time, MOCHA 1.0 will be released. It is planned that the local Drug Interactions Menu option will be disabled so local Drug Interactions File usefulness goes away. At a later time, in MOCHA 2.0 the National Drug Interactions File will stop being updated so the data feeding the local copy of the Drug Interactions file will stop.

They plan to have a Pharmacy Product System (PPS) in two forms, a national, common database (PPS-N) based on Oracle technology and a local database in each hospital (PPS-L) based on Cache SQL technology.

The plan is that some time in 2013, PPS-N will be updating the current pharmacy drug system National Drug File Management System but will also be creating the the institution (VA) wide relational database called the Enterprise Product List (EPL).

PPS-L (target is 2015) - Master National Drug File & Patches will no longer be used to update local VistA NDF files, but rather the the EPL list will be the source to update the local NDF files. Finally, the Re-Engineering Applications sometime after 2017 will start to use the PPS-L and not use the local VistA copy of NDF, and so its usefulness will go away.