I meetup with a few ex-colleagues yesternight and in short, it was a good catch-up.
So what does this have to do with health informatics?
Well, among the numerous discussions that took place, there was one particular conversation on what exactly a VNA is.
(for the official record, the company that I work for in my day job provides health IT solutions and the key offering is a ‘VNA’)
A friend from Company A said something like “a VNA is just an archive, its just storage, thats why they call it vendor neutral archive”.
This would sound logical to many people, especially those who are not familiar with medical imaging informatics but what surprised me was, this guy works for Company A which claims to also offers a VNA.
Now not all VNA are made the same (its just like Cloud Computing, not all Cloud Computing technology are made the same), some VNA are just archives (like Company A’s offering) but some VNA are more than archives, you see, the technology, along with commercial offerings has progressed to a whole new level.
VNA is now also term as Vendor Neutral Architecture and for those who have heard my educational talks, archiving is the easiest part, getting them distributed to the right place, at the right time, in the right format and in a timely fashion (among other things) is what makes the difference.
It was kind of sad that my friend does not truly understand what a VNA (especially since he makes a living in this segment) but I feel even sadder for people who actually bought VNA technology from their company.
The good news, I am spurred by this incident to try and find the time to resume on my next book – “Vendor Neutral Architecture & How it will change the World (of Health Informatics)” so more can be educated on what a VNA really is.
Details of the book project can be found here
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 