News Clips

Beth Noveck, a major contributor to Open Government, returns to teaching law

Craig Newmark | SFGate | January 25, 2011

Open government includes disclosure of what's going on inside government, where the money goes, really tough getting there having started from a culture of secrecy. Beth's work, along with a very strong team including Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra, has disclosed a lot. 

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Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients

Atul Gawande | New York Times | January 24, 2011

Can we lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care? Read More »

East Orange VA Clinic to be Part of New Patient-centered Model of Care

Nebojsa Zlatanovic | Examiner.com | January 24, 2011

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced last week that it's adopting a new model of care for its patients and the VA medical facility in East Orange, New Jersey, will be one of four locations where regional implementation teams will be deployed.  Read More »

Osirix PRO Excels in Competitive Face-Off

Press Release | aycan | January 23, 2011

ROCHESTER, NY -- Aycan, a recognized worldwide leader in medical imaging, was among only four companies invited to demonstrate their imaging workstations during the Workstation Face-Off session at this year’s International Multi-slice CT Symposium in Germany. Read More »

Fraud plagues global health fund backed by Bono, others

John Heilprin | MSNBC.com | January 23, 2011

A $21.7 billion development fund backed by celebrities and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations sees as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption, The Associated Press has learned.

Much of the money is accounted for with forged documents or improper bookkeeping, indicating it was pocketed, investigators for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria say. Donated prescription drugs wind up being sold on the black market. Read More »

Leadership as Trusteeship

Raj Sisodia | OpenSource.com | January 21, 2011

Trust is an essential human attribute and virtue. When we are born, we are completely helpless and at the mercy of others. We instinctively trust that someone will look after us, nurture us, protect us. Being trusting and being trustworthy are central tenets of what it means to be a human being. Read More »

Quit the RUC

Brian Klepper and David Kibbe | Kaiser Health News | January 20, 2011

Three times a year, 29 doctors gather around a table in a hotel meeting room. Their job is an unusual one: divvying up billions of Medicare dollars.

The group, convened by the American Medical Association, has no official government standing. Members are mostly selected by medical-specialty trade groups. Anyone who attends its meetings must sign a confidentiality agreement. Read More »

The Italian (Informatics) Job

Kevin Davies | BioITWorld.com | January 20, 2011

Pistoia is a charming small town in Tuscany where in 2007, a group of informatics executives from four leading pharmaceutical companies met to discuss some shared needs. Read More »

Federal Government Open Source Report Card: Which Agencies Passed and Which Failed?

Alan Shimel | Network World | January 20, 2011

Open Source for America has released their study of which departments in the federal government are most open source aware and friendly. The results may surprise you.

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Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) – a Badly Needed Initiative

Bharathi Ghanashyam | Journalists Against TB | January 20, 2011

OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best minds can collaborate & collectively endeavor to solve the complex problems associated with discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Leshmaniasis, etc. Read More »

Open-Government Initiative Marks Two-year Milestone

ALIYA STERNSTEIN | NextGov | January 20, 2011

To gather additional perspective on the future of Obama's open government effort, Nextgov interviewed Don Tapscott, co-author of the new book Macrowikinomics (Portfolio, 2010), a sequel to the 2006 best-seller WikinomicsMacrowikinomics examines the way networked communities are transforming the way governments operate.  Here is Tapscott's take on what the Obama administration should do next.

VA Employee-developed Hearing Loss Calculator Has 100-percent Accuracy

Bob Brewin | NextGov | January 20, 2011

Despite his heavy schedule, [Renford] Patch still found the time to exercise his computer programming skills and last year developed a hearing test calculator to automate the steps for determining compensation owed for varying degrees of hearing loss. Mike Walcoff, VA's acting undersecretary for benefits, told a media roundtable that the hearing loss calculator Patch developed works so well that VBA has rolled it out for use system-wide. Read More »

AidData Enters Aid Mapping Prototype into Apps for Development Competition

Michael Tierney | AidData | January 19, 2011

AidData, supported by Esri, has submitted its mapping prototype – Development Loop – in the World Bank’s Apps for Development Competition. The app allows users to visualize the geocoded locations of foreign aid projects. Read More »

President Kagame on Open Government in Rwanda

John F. Moore | Government in the Lab | January 19, 2011

I have had the pleasure of chatting with President Kagame multiple times on Twitter as well as exchanging emails with him on his views around open government in Rwanda.  His level of engagement is outstanding and I’m hopeful even more world leaders will model their behavior a bit more after his in terms of their use of Twitter.

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How Can Cancer Research Be Open-Sourced?

Egon Willighagen | Chemblaics | January 19, 2011

Mark asked on Quora on how can cancer research be open-sourced. So, far I found Quora to be rather noisy, even after signing up only to science related groups, themes, whatever it is called. However, every now and then there is an interesting question like this one.

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