VOOGLE

The VA Search Engine, named VOOGLE, provides an intuitive Graphic User Interface (GUI) search to retrieve data from the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA). The Voogle interface is a Silverlight Web application which references a Cache web service to execute MUMPS routines. These adapted routines extend the existing MUMPS routines in VistA global files to retrieve the requested information for a selected patient from VistA and return the information to Voogle in a standardized XML format. Voogle parses the response data into a generic data source which can then be used to display the query results in one of several output formats including charts, data grids, timelines, or as a searchable PDF. The web service executes specialized Voogle MUMPS routines which access and extend the existing VistA MUMPS routines. MUMPS databases use numeric keys to access all file and field entities within the database rather than the text field name. The Voogle MUMPS routines interact with a new set of specialized Voogle VistA entities which extend VistA file entities with additional fields such as default display type and security level. Once the correct data has been retrieved, the Voogle MUMPS routines perform further sorting and filtering processes to return the data in an XML format. Voogle and the specialized MUMPS routines add a layer of security by attaching a minimum access level for each data element in the VistA knowledge base. Each validated user is also assigned an access level. During processing, if the user requests data beyond his or her access level, the query response will only return a message that the data exceeds the user's security level.