News

Open Source EHR Systems in New Mexico & the Four Corner States

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across New Mexico and many other states across the U.S.  See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in New Mexico and the Four Corners. Read More »

Open source EHRs empower America's community health centers

How the economics of open source make sense for large scale, national healthcare infrastructure projects. A recent study  published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, examined "the use of open source electronic health records within the federal safety net."

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Health Affairs Briefing at the National Press Club on Health IT Adoption & Use

National Coordinator for Health IT, Dr. Farzard Mostashari, delivered the opening remarks at the Health Affairs briefing on trends in the adoption of health information technology held this week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  Sharing 'open data' is prominent among the accumulating good news about the progress being made in adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems across the U.S. Read More »

Report on "National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations"

The  National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations was recently released to the public. According to the report, this represents an important milestone on the path to ensuring the Nation’s Earth-observing capabilities to efficiently address society’s most pressing needs. It strives toward openness and integration of data across government agencies. However... Read More »

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

While Veterans Affairs was struggling with the nuances of the implementation of the Blue Button personal health record, and while the VA and the Pentagon are wrestling the Health Data Dictionary to the ground, we lived – and lived through – the hell of multiple rigid conventions described in [David] Weinberger’s book [Too Big to Know]. Read More »

VHA Providing EHR Training for Health Professional across the U.S.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) currently operates more than 1,500 sites of care, including 152 hospitals, 965 outpatient clinics, and over 130 VA nursing homes. Last year, over 116,000 health professional trainees received some or all of their clinical training in these VA healthcare facilities. The VA has academic  affiliation agreements with more than 1,800 colleges, universities, and medical schools across the U.S.   All of the physicians and healthcare professionals that pass through the VA receive training in the use of the VistA electronic health record (EHR) system. Read More »

OHNews Weekly Summary - 7/6/2013

July 6, 2013  -  The following is a brief listing of some of the hot news items, selected news clips, feature stories, and blogs posted on Open Health News (OHNews) over the past week that  we believe will be of interest to our readers across the U.S. and around the world. Read More »

Minnesota & Great Lake States using VistA & Other Open Source EHR Systems

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across Minnesota and many other states across the U.S.  See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Minnesota and other state Read More »

Open Source Software Creeps into Healthcare through Clinical Research

Although open source has not conquered the lucrative market for electronic health records (EHRs) used by hospital systems and increasingly by doctors, it is making strides in many other important areas of health care. One example is clinical research, as evidenced by OpenClinica in field of Electronic Data Capture (EDC) and LabKey for data integration. Last week I attended a conference for people who use OpenClinica in their research or want to make their software work with it. At any one time, hundreds of thousands of clinical trials are going on around the world, many listed on an FDA site. Many are low-budget and would be reduced to using Excel spreadsheets to store data if they didn’t have the Community edition of OpenClinica. Read More »

EHR Systems & Cost Transparency in the Healthcare Industry

Cost transparency is obviously a big issue in the healthcare industry. Whether it’s the amazing variation in costs hospitals charge patients for similar medical procedures, or the costs associated with acquiring and implementing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for a hospital - Why are all these costs often carefully hidden?  Is there something special about the healthcare industry that says – "Let's not talk about how much things really cost." Apparently, many industry leaders must feel that hospitals boards and patients have no need to know this information. Read More »