Open Health News (OHN) Weekly Summary - 12/14/2013

December 14, 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. We've also included links to some upcoming open source and health IT conferences and events.

Some of the key themes dominating the news this week involved:

  • Continued growth of mobile health (mHealth) industry and FDA concerns making news;
  • Increasing attention being paid to the 'Internet of Everything' or the 'Internet of Things';
  • Ongoing news about a wide range of innovative 'Open Health' activity and solutions from across the U.S. and around the world.

Roger Maduro
Publisher & Managing Editor, Open Health News


Headlines

OHN News, Features & Blog Posts

Selected News Clips

 

Brief Abstracts of Selected News Stories

 

Using 'Open Source' Tools to Fight Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI)

There are 110 million sexually transmitted infections (STI) among women and men nationwide, with 20 million new STIs reported each year. CDC officials, estimate direct medical costs of STIs at a over $16 billion annually. Collaborative, 'open source' tools like 'Private Results' and 'So They Can Know' developed by Sexual Health Innovations offer help in fighting this public health battle in cities across the U.S. and around the world. Read More »

Masters In Counseling: Free Social Networking & Information Web Sites

Masters In Counseling.Org is a free informational web site for those who are interested in enrolling in an online degree program to obtain a Master of Counseling degree. The site now contains a list of pages on Google+, just compiled by Laura Harris, that link to social networking sites with information and resources aimed specifically at the mental health and counseling communities. Read More »

OSEHRA Summit 2013 Presentations - Now Available Online

The 2nd Annual Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) Summit & Workshop was held earlier this year in Bethesda, Maryland. All of the procedings from the Summit Conference & Workshop are now posted on the OSEHRA web site and available for viewing by OSEHRA members. Learn about the open source VistA system, open source business models, and a variety of open source tools the community has developed. Read More »

Reporting from the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) Project Vendor Day

 
By Marc Wine | December 10, 2013

For over a decade, DoD and the VA have been talking EHR collaboration, see-sawing between a possible open source oriented solution like VistA versus a proprietary option such as EPIC. At the second DoD Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization (DHMSM) Project Vendor Day held on December 4th  in Washington, D.C., the project’s program manager announced his management team will pursue a DoD 'core' EHR solution independent of the VA-DoD  Interagency Program Office (IPO). Read More »

Untested mHealth apps proliferate, but few good ones work well

Andrew Litt, MD | ComputerWorld | December 11, 2013

There are more than 43,000 healthcare apps available through the Apple iTunes App Store. That sounds like a wealth of useful apps, but the truth is that only a handful of them are actually being used. Read More »

mHealth Rapidly Becoming A Global Movement

Eric Wicklund | mHealth News | December 6, 2013

While mHealth technology may be saving lives in places like Africa and the Caribbean, in Europe, Asia and Australia the results aren't so dramatic. Healthcare is already an established industry there, and the adoption of mHealth tools and services is following a more gradual path. [...] Read More »

Open Source WordPress 3.8 Content Management System (CMS) Released

Sean Kerner | eWeek | December 12, 2013

Blogs and Websites around the world are getting a new look today, thanks to the new WordPress 3.8 release. WordPress is the world's most widely deployed open-source content management and blog system platform, powering more than 73 million sites today. Read More »

Software May Be Eating The World, But Open Source Software Is Eating Itself

Matt Asay | ReadWrite | December 12, 2013

...the new world of open source is moving at an accelerated, Darwinian pace, leaving no project to rest on its laurels. Read More »

Open Source Tears Down Walled Gardens to Connect 'Internet of Everything'

Jim Zemlin | Linux.com | December 10, 2013

The numbers are staggering. Gartner predicts that the 'Internet of Everything' or the 'Internet of Things' -- autonomous communication between a wide range of everyday devices, objects and applications – will add $1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020. Read More »

Ray Kurzweil: This is your future

Ray Kurzweil | CNN | December 10, 2013

...technologies to reprogram the "software" that underlie human biology are already a thousand times more powerful than they were when the genome project was completed in 2003...<--break-> Read More »

Linux Foundation Builds 'Internet of Things' Effort

Sean Kerner | Datamation | December 10, 2013

The Linux Foundation does many different things, and is now leading an effort to help advance the Internet of Everything. Read More »

Solid Learning Resources for Raspberry Pi Arrive

Sam Dean | OStatic | December 9, 2013

...the diminutive $25/$35 Linux computer dubbed Raspberry Pi has emerged as one of the biggest open source stories of this year, and the two millionth Pi device recently sold. Read More »

Switch to open source successfully completed, City of Munich says

Loek Essers | ComputerWorld | December 12, 2013

Munich's switch to open-source software has been successfully completed, with the vast majority of the public administration's users now running its own version of Linux, city officials said Thursday. Read More »

Reminder The following conferences are coming up in February 2014:

FOSDEM 2014
Africa Healthcare Summit 2014
    SCALE 12X
    HIMSS 2014 Annual Conference