How the Trump Budget Undercuts Security Risks Posed by Pandemics
President Trump proposed a US$54 billion military budget increase to solidify the security of our nation. However, the government also recognizes pandemic threats as an issue of national security – one that knows no borders. In the last four years, we have faced the Ebola epidemic – contained after significant loss of life – and Zika, which is still not contained. Collectively, we will feel these effects for a generation, while children born with Zika-related defects and their families will feel the effects every day of their lives...
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The Blockchain Interview with Jason Goldwater
There are three, initially, that it has the potential to solve. First is access to data. The way that systems have been set up in hospitals or large integrated physician networks is that the data will either reside in a centralized server or now the trend is to reside it in a cloud. That’s fine and that certainly has been effective, but you’re talking about a large consolidation of data in a centralized location. Blockchain is very different because it is what is known as distributed ledger technology...
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How Disaster Relief Efforts Could Be Improved with Game Theory
The number of disasters has doubled globally since the 1980s, with the damage and losses estimated at an average US$100 billion a year since the new millennium, and the number of people affected also growing. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest natural disaster in the U.S., with estimates between $100 billion and $125 billion. The death toll of Katrina is still being debated, but we know that at least 2,000 were killed, and thousands were left homeless. Worldwide, the toll is staggering. The triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that started March 11, 2011 in Fukushima, Japan killed thousands, as did the 2010 Haiti earthquake...
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Alangi Derick: Wikimedia’s First African Contributor to Google Summer of Code
Alangi Derick comes from Buea, Cameroon. He joined the Wikimedia movement to develop his skills in coding, and was quickly hooked by the movement’s values and its community culture, eventually becoming a staunch advocate for it in his university. As a computer science student at the time, he joined the movement a year and a half ago, and his work booked him a place at the 2016 Google Summer of Code as one of the Wikimedia Foundation’s students. Derick passed the program, helped mentor teenage participants in Google Code-in for two consecutive years, and has helped fix bugs in the MediaWiki software...
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Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines
One of the world's top cardiologists says that many of the major nutrition guidelines have no good basis in science. "I'm not a nutrition scientist and that may be an advantage because every week in the newspaper we read something is good for you and the same thing the next week is bad for you," said Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil, (McMaster University), at Cardiology Update 2017, a symposium presented by the European Society of Cardiology and the Zurich Heart House...
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Bill to Make Federal Data Open, Machine-Readable Reintroduced in Both Chambers
A bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers reintroduced Wednesday the OPEN Government Data Act — a bill that passed the Senate last year but stalled in the House. The bill, which would set a presumption that federal data should be published online in a machine-readable format, has a broad support from open data advocates, government spending watchdogs and the technology industry...
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How Flawed Science Is Undermining Good Medicine
A surprising medical finding caught the eye of NPR's veteran science correspondent Richard Harris in 2014. A scientist from the drug company Amgen had reviewed the results of 53 studies that were originally thought to be highly promising — findings likely to lead to important new drugs. But when the Amgen scientist tried to replicate those promising results, in most cases he couldn't...
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Doctors Demand Extreme EHR Makeover ... Right Now
Just about every week or so there’s a new report chronicling doctors’ frustrations with electronic health records. Drill down a bit and the source of discontent becomes clear: poor usability, clunky interfaces, ineffective search and too many clicks. So what would actually make doctors like their EHR? “They need a tremendous makeover with lots of clinical input to make it easy to do not only the right thing, but the things you do all the time,” said Robert Wachter, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
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OSCON 2017
The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) is a conference for anyone who has a passion for open source, from developers and programmers to activists and community leaders. OSCON is designed to share real-world open source practices and ways to successfully implement open source into various projects or workflows.
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HHS IDEA Lab to Host Innovation Day on May 15
Join us for HHS Innovation Day on May 15th at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., where you’ll experience first-hand how new approaches and creative thinking can advance our work in government. You’ll hear from stellar employees at HHS who are using entrepreneurial methods like design thinking and lean startup to improve how their office or agency delivers on the HHS mission. The day will also feature a panel on deploying creative thinking to improve work in government, and innovative speakers from government and the private sector.
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