FAQ: Why did you choose VistA as the basis for this work?

VistA has several specific advantages:

1) It is easily available, in the public domain, and can run
on common, inexpensive hardware. This means that a personal
instance of VistA can run by participants, if desired.

2) It is extensive. VistA supports the full gamut of healthcare
for adults (veterans) in the United States, using modern and
standardized terminology sets, and covering all aspects of
a hospital. There are a huge number of Fields (over 70K) in a
recent count, with over 20K programs using that data. This
should provide a fertile field to develop knowledge, and recogize
patterns of usage. Since the system is actively in use in over
170 hospitals, there are many documents on the meaning of
the data, and the practice of using it, so less guesswork will
be needed in determining how ambiguities should be interpreted.

3) The resulting artifact/ontology will have value beyond
its use to learn and experiment with ontology modeling.
As there is already a community based around VistA, in both
the private and the public sectors, the artifact, once created, will
be able to be maintained past the modeling phase, and will serve
as a source of information about the usefulness of an ontology
on a long term basis.