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Paideia

The Paideia project is an ambitious education program created to train the next generation of VISTA experts. The dearth of VISTA-related training programs over the last decade combined with the large number of experienced VISTA hardhats now retiring has created a generation gap that threatens our community's ability to meet the growing demand for medical informatics. A key component of our strategy to address this problem is to pair master hardhats with new apprentices. These teams can tackle real-world programming jobs while training their students to aid and one day become peers to their teachers. This approach not only trains new programmers but also strengthens the skill base of existing hardhats by helping them trade skills and advice while working on demonstration projects (much like the classic craftsmanship approach to education).

Paideia is the VISTA Expertise Network's flagship project. The Network designed this program to cross organizational boundaries to partner with other open-source medical-technology organizations (such as WorldVistA and the VistA Software Alliance), public academic institutions (such as the University of Washington's Health Informatics and Health Information Management program), public health agencies (like the U.S. Indian Health Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs), and individual healthcare practices, clinics, and hospitals (like Oroville Hospital in California). By networking these organizations together through internship, recruitment, public service, and outreach, Paideia can address and reverse the VISTA expertise brain drain and help the VISTA community resume growth and development.

Paideia creates the necessary conditions for a VISTA renaissance. Following VISTA's unusually productive management model, Paideia's new generation of VISTA experts will gradually acquire authority over the software and bring to fruition the many ambitious projects unfinished or unstarted during the last decade.