The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded Ray Group International of Tampa, Fla., a $4.9 million contract to support the open source community that is contributing software code to the VA and Defense Department integrated electronic health record system.

RGI, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business that provides software engineering support services, will perform operations to continue the development and establishment of the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) over the next six months, according to a June 21 announcement  in Federal Business Opportunities.

With the contract in place, OSEHRA will be able to recruit necessary staff and deploy accounting capability and other business systems to ultimately make the OSEHRA software development community operationally self-sufficient, according to the notice. RGI will provide project management, analysis, configuration management and testing services. 

OSEHRA will enable federal agencies, industry and academia to contribute software code to create applications and tools for the iEHR, to improve and modernize VA's VistA electronic health record system, and eventually to certify code through testing.

DOD recently said that it has contributed the software code of the theater version of its AHLTA clinical information system into the open source community. OSEHRA started with the VistA code.

The custodial agent for the open source community must approve software code for integration into the evolving VistA code base and interoperability of complimentary software.