Welcome to a web site dedicated to fostering a virtual community for the worldwide users of the VISTA software!

VistA is the comprehensive suite of patient-care software developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs over the past 40 years, and now used by hundreds of enterprises worldwide, in and outside of the VA.  At VistA's very core, represented by the shops on the left, you have all the tools and materials you need to build an economical, efficient, scaleable and integrated system. Add the VistA applications and you have a complete healthcare system.

Are you interested, but new to VistA? Read about Hardhats, VistA and DHCP.  Do you already know a little about VistA and want to learn more? Read on.

News and Recent Events    (reverse chronological order)

    September 8-10, 2023: 41th VistA Community Meeting (Virtual).

    April 24, 2023: VA Pauses all future roll-outs of the new Oracle Cerner EHR.

    September 30-October 2, 2022: 40th VistA Community Meeting (Virtual due to the COVID-19 Pandemic).

    October 22-24, 2021: 39th VistA Community Meeting (Virtual due to the COVID-19 Pandemic).

    May 20, 2021: Instructions on using systemd instead of initd with VistA on GT.M/YottaDB added by Kevin Toppenberg.

    March 6, 2021: New version of MSC FileMan released.

     February 14 2020: OSEHRA shuts down. After 9 years of good work, OSEHRA shuts down. OSEHRA resources are distributed between WorldVistA and Logica Health. More details on the exact distribution of resources can be found in this presentation.

     January 2019: Updated install instructions by Sam Habiel, plus two new pages: How to update a VistA System and Set-up HL7 Messages from and to VistA

    June 5, 2017: Newly-appointed [and subsequently fired] VA Secretary announces ultimate replacement of VistA by Cerner, without competitive bidding.

    December, 2016: Thanks to Sam Habiel, Bhaskar, and others, our installation instructions for VistA have been extensively updated.

    August, 2016: VA healthcare system named 'most wired' for 4th consecutive year.

    August, 2016: VA releases 'Version 22.2' of VA FileMan, representing adoption of code produced outside VA.

Learning More...

First, don't make the mistake of thinking VistA is an all or nothing proposition.   It is a very large collection of software, and only a portion of it may be relevant to your needs.  Remember that there are many non-medical enterprises that use portions of the VistA software infrastructure.

One of the easiest ways to begin learning about VistA and its potential for you, is to explore this web site. Be sure to check out our catalogue of VistA Adopters, left, where you will find some links to information about various kinds of enterprises around the world that use VistA.    Don't overlook the little Google "Search" bar at the left, to help you in browsing Hardhats.Org.   Another source of information about VistA (and its software cousin, RPMS) is Vistapedia.net.  And our Links page at the left gives you other paths to investigate.

When you are ready to start running some software on your own machine, go online to get every bit of VistA that can be released to the public via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

Once you have a handle on what VistA is and how you might benefit from it, feel free to ask questions on the Hardhats mailing list. Hardhats is a user community that we hope you will find surprisingly friendly and helpful.

Now start browsing....