The VA Kernel is a set of programs, developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs of the United States Government, which provide an operating system and MUMPS implementation independent abstraction to the VistA Hospital Information System. These programs (called 'routines' in MUMPS) are the only programs which are expected to not be written in ANSI Standard MUMPS.

The CHCS system and the RPMS system have a Kernel as well, which provides a similar degree of support to those sytems as the VA Kernel does to VistA.

The VA Kernel provides abstractions for:

  • Menu Management (MenuMan)
  • Login and Access Security
  • Task scheduling and Batch processing
  • Input/Output devices
  • Protocol and Event processing
  • Date processing and manipulation
  • Mathematical and common library functions