News Clips

VA Launches Open Source Approach For Electronic Health Record Modernization

Bob Brewin | NextGov | February 22, 2011

The Veterans Affairs Department kicked off a project last Friday to modernize its decades-old electronic health record system with an open source model that it said will benefit both VA and private health care providers, including doctors and hospitals.

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Update: Body network spars with Bluetooth

Rick Merritt | EE Times | February 22, 2011

An emerging body area network (BAN) technology is gearing up to compete with Bluetooth Low Energy across a broad range of medical and consumer applications. The competition comes as medical devices are increasingly adopting a growing set of wireless network technologies including Wi-Fi and Zigbee.

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Share the Knowledge, Health Researchers Say

Tom Spears | Ottawa Citizen | February 22, 2011

Medical researchers from Ottawa and Britain want all their colleagues to tell the world what studies they’re working on. Sometimes the left lab doesn’t know what the right lab is doing. The call to announce new studies publicly applies to “systematic reviews,” which are wide-ranging summaries of all the existing research on a given health topic.

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Saving Healthcare Billions: Let’s fork the VA’s Electronic Health Records System

David Eaves | Eaves.CA | February 22, 2011

Who, you might ask, is Ken Kizer? He's a former Naval officer and emergency medicine physician who became the US Veteran's Affair's undersecretary for health in 1994.  While the list of changes he made is startling and impressive, what particularly caught my attention is that he accomplished what the Government of Ontario failed to do with $1Billion in spending: implementing an electronic medical record system that works.

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Opening the Way for Open Source: New Scientific Collaborations for Neglected Disease R&D

Press Release | Results for Development Institute | February 22, 2011

R4D’s Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment is pleased to present its draft “Open Source for Neglected Diseases: Challenges and Opportunities” for public consultation. The draft landscaping report is open for public review and comment until March 4, 2011.

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Open Source for Neglected Diseases: Challenges and Opportunities

Hassan Masum and Rachelle Harris | Results for Development Institute | February 22, 2011

This landscaping paper discusses open source approaches for R&D for neglected diseases, and their potential to lower costs and R&D time frames, increase collaboration, and build a knowledge commons. The paper describes existing initiatives and debates, and suggests how readers and the global health community might better make use of open source approaches.

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Medtech prognosis: Going digital, under stress

George Leopold , Rick Merritt | EE Times | February 22, 2011

“2010 will go down as one of the most angst-ridden years in health care . . . [but] medical electronics will be at the nexus of where health care is going in the next decade.” With those opening comments at the recent EE Times Medical Electronics Summit, Charlie Whelan, a director of life science consulting at Frost & Sullivan, encapsulated the outlook for the health care sector.

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Public v Private Isn't the Issue - What's Best Is Key [UK]

Ian Birrell | London Evening Standard | February 22, 2011

[British Prime Minister] David Cameron has made an unequivocal declaration that he aims to release the iron grip of state control on all public services, unleashing fierce competition and breaking inert monopolies.

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Brandon Regional Health Authority Partners with ByWater Solutions for Koha Support and Implementation

Press Release | Brandon Regional Health Center , Koha, ByWater Solutions | February 22, 2011

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Brandon Regional Health Authority, of Brandon, Manitoba, has partnered with them for their implementation and support of the Koha ILS.

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Axial Exchange Announces Completion of Series A Financing

Press Release | Axial Exchange, Canaan Partners Healthcare, IDEA Fund Partners | February 22, 2011

Axial Exchange, Inc. announced today that it has secured Series A financing. The round was lead by Canaan Partners with IDEA Fund Partners also participating in the round. The proceeds will be used to fund the continued development of the company's health care communication platform and to expand its sales and marketing initiatives.

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Anita Palepu Speaks on Access to Medical Research

Dean Giustini | Open Medicine | February 22, 2011

Anita Palepu Speaks on Access to Medical Research 

[Slideshow at URL]

Ramsey County Mental Health Center Announces Go Live of DSS, Inc.’s Fully Integrated EHR System

Press Release | DSS, Inc. | February 22, 2011

Ramsey County Mental Health Center, a St. Paul, Minn., facility serving individuals with mental and behavioral health disorders, today announced the go-live of a fully integrated electronic health records (EHR) system from DSS, Inc., a provider of software, support and development of vxVistA. Read More »

Healthcare: openEHR’s potential to handle complexity & diversity

Frectal | Frectally Speaking | February 22, 2011

We have noted that healthcare is a complex system that is particularly  information-intensive. We have noted that healthcare reform requires clinical leadership, process improvement and effective health IT.

In noting that healthcare IT has had mixed success to date, we have identified the important need to support the greater alignment of process improvements with information systems. Read More »

Smartphones, Apps, Students Hackers and Startups Making Revolutionary Technology to Help the Poor at Low Cost

Brian Wang | Nextbigfuture | February 21, 2011

Technology Review - Last year College Senior Njenga and three classmates developed a program that will let thousands of Kenyan health workers use mobile phones to report and track the spread of diseases in real time—and they'd done it for a tiny fraction of what the government had been on the verge of paying for such an application. Read More »

Roger Baker Touts VA and DoD Health IT Commonality at Budget Hearing

David Perera | FierceGovernmentIT | February 21, 2011

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments are weeks away from agreement on a common electronic health record, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a congressional panel Feb. 17.

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