“I am going to my grave with my disk drive in my cold dead hands.” So a senior scientist told a junior researcher, who related the tale at a 2013 US National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop on the reuse of physical samples in the geosciences. Sharing — of data sets, metadata, models, software and other resources — promises to speed discoveries, improve reproducibility and expand economic development. But it requires people to change. Overcoming personal reluctance is doubly difficult because many aspects of the scientific enterprise undermine sharing. Right now, most departments, funders and journals presume that data are proprietary from collection to publication..

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One of Europe’s biggest science spenders could soon branch out into publishing. The European Commission, which spends more than €10 billion annually on research, may follow two other big league funders, the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and set up a “publishing platform” for the scientists it funds, in an attempt to accelerate the transition to open-access publishing in Europe...

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Data flooding the healthcare industry has the potential to completely revolutionize patient care and drive improved health outcomes. Yet when left inadequately structured or under-automated, the deluge of data is one contributing factor to administrative burden — a pervasive issue affecting clinicians across most specialties. Eighty percent of physicians today are professionally overextended or at capacity, leaving them with no time to see additional patients, according to the 2016 Physicians Foundation survey...

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To understand how machine learning can aid healthcare organizations, healthcare executives first must have a basic grasp of what machine learning is and what it can do. “Machine learning is about discovering new knowledge,” said Zeeshan Syed, director of the clinical inference and algorithms program at Stanford Health Care and clinical associate professor, anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “At a high level, artificial intelligence is getting an agent, software, to behave like it’s smart..."

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As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve and put PHI at risk, precision medicine guidelines need to be updated to account for new health data privacy threats, according to a recent opinion piece published in the Oxford University Press. The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System Senior Counsel Jennifer Kulynych, JD, PhD explained that data re-identification methods are not foolproof, and it can be difficult to determine exactly how individuals’ genomes are being used...

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Imagine getting the chance to work for some of the biggest software companies in the world. This is while you’re in university and getting paid for it as well. You also get the chance to be in the spotlight and contribute to the open-source software community. If you’re still interested in taking this opportunity, then you should apply for the Google Summer of Code...

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In Nov. 2016, Nji Collins Gbah, a tech enthusiast from Bamenda, Cameroon, started participating in the Google Code-in competition, the global online contest which introduces pre-university students aged 13 to 17 to the world of open source. Despite his tenacity, the odds seem stacked against Gbah...During the seven-week program, Gbah completed 20 tasks using the Open Medical Record System, or OpenMRS, a platform that focuses on improving healthcare service in developing countries.

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Reliable data on health is an essential part of a comprehensive health information system, which is central to evidence-informed, responsive decision-making for better public health program. A well-functioning health information system also helps policy-makers and program managers to monitor population health and plan interventions accordingly. In line with the vision of a Digital Bangladesh, one of the more significant changes that have happened in our health sector is transforming paper-based health reporting into an electronic health information system, along with initiating a medical record system through the Open MRS software...

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