Allscripts, Cerner, Epic Signal More Open EHRs Ahead

Tom Sullivan | Healthcare IT News | March 9, 2017

Top executives at three electronic health record companies — Allscripts, Cerner and Epic — revealed that they're working to make their EHRs more open. That means embracing APIs as a means to enable third-parties to write software and apps that run on their platforms... Allscripts CEO Paul Black said publishing APIs that third parties can use to create apps for its platform "is a big deal" and, in fact, the company has some 5,000 developers certified to do just that: Some 2 billion API data exchanges have been conducted on its platform since 2013...

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Open Source Project Management Can Be Risky Business

Our digital lives are powered by programming philosophers who choose to develop their code out in the open. All programs begin with lines of instruction. When ready for execution these lines of instruction are converted to a binary format that the computer can execute. Open source programs are programs where the human readable code is accessible to anyone. This philosophy of openness and freedom has allowed these projects to impact the lives of everyone. The Linux kernel is the core of all Android devices, and nearly a third of all Internet traffic rides on just one openly developed project, Netflix...

Open Project Collaboration from Elementary to University Classrooms

The practice of teaching should be built upon collaboration and remixing content. When a friend asks us to explain something, we don't trademark our answer or deliver a monologue without asking for input. This is a simple example, but it gets to the heart of the dysfunctional design inherent in our existing education system...19th-century state of education is dangerously out of step with our 21st-century world. Worse, it leaches away our students' passion for academic and lifelong learning. We must infuse the vital, human element of collaboration into our vision for education transformation.

Linux Foundation Releases Business Open Source Basics eBook

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | ZD Net | February 15, 2017

Want to know how your business can get the most from open source? This free ebook can help. Developers know that open source is great. Even Microsoft is now on the open-source bandwagon. But, outside of the IT department, many companies don't understand why and how open source can help their businesses. The Linux Foundation has the answers you need in its new free Open Source Software Basics ebook. "Organizations have begun to realize that as they adopt more open-source software, they need to establish processes for everything from selecting software -- to deploying it, to ensuring license compliance," said Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin at the Open Source Leadership Summit in Lake Tahoe, Calif.

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DHS-Developed Krona Software Powers Humanitarian Project

Tammy Waitt | American Security Today | March 10, 2017

Software originally developed at the at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) to sequence DNA for biodefense is now being used by Microsoft to sequence mosquito DNA in the fight against disease. Developed by the NBACC’s National Bioforensic Analysis Center Genomics Team for bioforensics applications, Krona is a unique visualization tool that enables users to quickly analyze massive quantities of data – such as more than 100 million sequences of DNA in a single mosquito sample, according to Microsoft...

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New Trends and Troubles for AI in Medicine

Nelson Williams | Silicon Angle | March 11, 2017

Medicine is a complex field. So complex that any given person can’t know more than a fraction of what’s going on. Keeping up with the latest discoveries is impossible. Machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence offer a new way of looking at medicine and a great power to automate medical tasks. At the South by Southwest conference event in Austin, TX, a panel of experts came together to discuss the state of medical AI and how machine learning can benefit both patients and doctors...

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Linux Foundation Chief: Businesses That Don't Use Open Source 'Will Fail'

Conner Forrest | TechRepublic | March 10, 2017

Open source took center stage at the final keynote address of the 2017 Google Cloud Next conference on Friday, where tech leaders presented on the importance of openness in tech and business. The focus on open source was highlighted in an address from Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, who claimed that organizations that "don't harvest the shared innovation" of open source "will fail." Open is the new economic norm in tech and business, Zemlin said, as "all of us are smarter than any one of us"...

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Unleashed: Open Source Tech Goes to the Dogs...and Cats...and...

I was discussing open source technology with my cat this morning and he brought up a good point: "Why don't you do an article on open source tech for animals?" You know, Donald's right. Animal open source tech deserves a spotlight. Afterall, animals appear in many open source brands, and pets, like mine at least, lend lots of support while I'm trying out new software, building gadgets, or just writing about this stuff. I did a little research, and perhaps you won't be surprised to learn there is a gaggle (the name for a group of geese) of open source projects that help us keep, love, and improve the lives of animals. Let's take a gander (also another word for a goose), shall we?

Is Use of the Open Source GPL License Declining?

A little while ago I saw an interesting tweet from Stephen O'Grady at RedMonk on the state of open source licensing, including this graph. This graph shows how license usage has changed from 2010 to 2017. In reading it, it is clear that usage of the GPL 2.0 license, one of the purest copyleft licenses around, has more than halved in usage. According to the chart it would appear that the popularity of open source licensing has subsequently shifted to the MIT and Apache licenses. There has also been a small increase in GPL 3.0 usage. So, what does all this mean?

Opinion: How a Few Costly EHRs Could Harm the Healthcare System

Erin Dietsche | Becker's Health IT & CIO Review | March 9, 2017

In a recent blog post, Medsphere President and CEO Irv Lichtenwald outlined his thoughts on how EHRs' prices affect the larger healthcare system. A CNN Money article from last September found healthcare costs increased more in August 2016 than in any other month since 1984. The reason behind the rising costs is, as Mr. Lichtenwald wrote, complex. But technology is largely contributing to such increases...

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