News Clips

PCMH Program Yields $155 Million In Avoided Costs

Matthew Smith | Health Directions | July 24, 2013

A patient-centered medical home (PCMH) program operated by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has saved an estimated $155 million in prevented claims over its first three years through June 2011. Read More »

How New OSS Communities And Code Bases Are Developed From Old Ones

Jesse Hood | OpenLogic | July 24, 2013

Open source software developers modify significant amounts of source code for a variety of different reasons.  Depending on the amount of modification, the number of developers doing the fragmentation (sometimes called a “fork” in the code), the status of these developers in the community, and the intention of the development community, the results could be just a few lines of updated code, or it could be a complete fork of the code base that takes the open source project in an entirely new direction. Read More »

Hoopla Wants To Be A Free Netflix For Library Users

Laura Hazard Owen | GigaOM | July 24, 2013

Hoopla wants to make borrowing material from a library as convenient as streaming content on the web. The company, launching to the public today after several months in beta, offers patrons of participating libraries access to on-demand streaming movies and TV shows, as well as audiobooks and music that can be streamed or downloaded. Read More »

Freedom, Social Support, and Motivation

Matt Mattox | Axial Exchange | July 24, 2013

A recent TechCrunch article by Nir Eyal suggests that many apps fail to change behavior because they feel too much like work. We want to lose weight, but the obligation to log every meal seems to rob us of autonomy much like homework does. Read More »

What's The Role Of A Hospital In 10 Years?

Dave Chase | Forbes | July 24, 2013

Dr. Eric Topol was named #1 Most Influential Physician Executive in Healthcare of 2012 by Modern Healthcare so his views are closely watched. In addition to his role as a cardiologist, geneticist and author of the Creative Destruction of Medicine, he’s also the Editor-in-Chief of Medscape (WebMD’s leading physician offering). Read More »

What The US Can Learn From Africa’s Booming Economy

Imara Jones | Yes Magazine | July 24, 2013

Seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies are in Africa. Behind that is a surge in healthy young people and an emphasis on local markets. Read More »

Partnership to tie LOINC and SNOMED

Diana Manos | Government Health IT | July 24, 2013

The Regenstrief Institute and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation announced Wednesday they have signed a long-term agreement to begin cooperative work linking their global healthcare terminologies: Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, or LOINC, and SNOMED Clinical Terms. Read More »

Panelists Suggest Delaying Stage 2 By One Year

Tom Sullivan | Government Health IT | July 24, 2013

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) began the Senate Finance committee hearing on health IT with a Thomas Edison quote: “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Read More »

NIH Offers Data Science $96 Million

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | July 24, 2013

The National Institutes of Health is going to fund several new Big Data to Knowledge Centers of Excellence, from a budget of $96 million over the next four years. Read More »

Let’s Create An Alternative Copyright Agenda By And For The Users

Maira Sutton | Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) | July 24, 2013

Negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) have excluded public participation from the entire process, while allowing Big Content interests to see and direct the terms of this trade agreement. That is why the Fair Deal Coalition, of which EFF is a member, is launching an open platform [...]. Read More »

In A Close Vote, Congress Shamefully Defeats Amendment That Sought To Curtail NSA Surveillance

Mark M. Jaycox | Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) | July 24, 2013

The US House of Representatives came within a few votes of passing a novel amendment that attempted to strike out funding for the highly contentious NSA calling records surveillance program... Read More »

Hybrid Clouds Fuel Choices For Health IT

Maureen Kaplan | Healthcare IT News | July 24, 2013

Many healthcare companies are using a range of infrastructure services to meet their changing IT needs. This usually begins with storing data in an in-house data center then moving to collocation in an outsourced data center. Read More »

House Bill Would Mandate EHR Interoperability For Pentagon, VA

Staff Writer | iHealthBeat | July 24, 2013

Late last month, lawmakers introduced a bill (HR 2590) that would require the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to establish interoperability between their electronic health record systems within 180 days of the bill's enactment, EHR Intelligence reports (Bresnick, EHR Intelligence, 7/23). Read More »

Feds Put Heat On Web Firms For Master Encryption Keys

Declan McCullagh | CNET | July 24, 2013

Whether the FBI and NSA have the legal authority to obtain the master keys that companies use for Web encryption remains an open question, but it hasn't stopped the U.S. government from trying. Read More »

Did Facebook Miss A Massive Opportunity By Building A Walled Garden Instead Of A Truly Open Platform?

Matthew Ingram | GigaOM | July 24, 2013

When Facebook launched its platform strategy in 2007, it seemed as though the social network wanted to create a kind of social operating system anyone could use and build on — but the reality has turned out to be something very different. Read More »