The creation of a joint electronic health record for military service members—from recruitment through retirement—opens the door to many opportunities for small businesses, according to Roger Baker, chief information officer for the Veterans Affairs Department.

Another of VA’s hot spots for small vendors is mobile application development, he added.

Baker, in an interview with Set-Aside Alert, said small businesses are well positioned to benefit from participating in the open source software community that is expected to contribute software code to the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments’ digital record system now in development.

In 2011, the VA and DOD committed to jointly develop an integrated system. As part of its strategy, the VA in August 2011 released source code from its “VistA” legacy digital health record system to the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA), a non-profit organization that is working with developers, users and vendors to develop open source components of the joint record system.

Developers and vendors of all sizes are invited to join the open source community to participate in the effort, Baker said.

“We have about 100 businesses participating so far. Most of them are small businesses,” Baker said.

“What the open source ecosystem does is to break down the lock-in that large vendors have had,” Baker added. “It makes it easier to see the source code and to be able to bid on things in the future.”

“With open source, we do not have to let a $500 million contract. We can do $10 million to $15 million contracts that will let small businesses compete,” he said.

While the VA has committed to utilizing open source development for its share of the joint record, the DOD has not made the same commitment to open source. Baker said the open source ecosystem model is still evolving, and likely will affect procurements.

“We are trying to figure out creative ways to use OSEHRA to do procurement differently,” Baker said. For example, the VA may decide to award prizes for the best software code, he suggested. One of the upcoming requirements is for patient scheduling software.

The VA in June awarded Ray Group International LLC of Tampa, Fla., a $4.9 million contract to support the open source community. The company is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business.

Another active area for VA small business contracting is in mobile applications, Baker added. The White House’s digital government plan released in May ordered all agencies to develop at least two citizen-facing mobile applications.

“There is real opportunity for small businesses for mobile apps,” Baker said. “We have folks developing mobile apps internally, but (many) will use contractors.”

For more information: OSEHRA website: http://www.osehra.org/