Guest Article: Shakespeare in Namespace, or why Blue Button took off as fast as it did

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Peter Levin as an outside technology strategy adviser while he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Veterans Affairs during the first Obama Administration. Peter’s a hard-charging, fast-moving, take-no-prisoners style senior technical executive; he was an entrepreneur, professor, and engineer long before he came into government so it was no surprise that he was able to accomplish a great deal during his tenure as the CTO of VA. Two of his most enduring accomplishments that affect the healthcare world writ large are his inaugural deployment of the Blue Button at the VA and helping spin out the VistA EHR source code into OSEHRA. He’s too modest to say it himself but I like to refer to him as the “father of the Blue Button” because I don’t think it would have taken off the way it did without his design leadership and his ability to knock heads together (including mine) both in and outside the VA to make it happen. Recently I asked him why he thought, beyond the obvious reasons of high value to veterans and other patients, that Blue Button took as fast as it did. Here’s what Peter had to say: One of my favorite books is “Too Big to Know”, by Harvard University’s David Weinberger.  If you have a chance, jump to page 145, under the heading “when scientists disagree with scientists”, which is a brilliant exposition on the enormous technical impact and societal (yes, I mean everybody’s) benefit of a very sim...
Source: The Healthcare IT Guy - Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs