The 25th anniversary of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act on Friday prompted a range of tech companies to call for new rules to guide how the U.S. government gains access to personal information online, and lawmakers in Congress have vowed to revise the law by the end of the year. Read More »

We set out to evaluate how well mobile hardware and accompanying apps would perform in a field environment and whether these were practical devices for medics to use when documenting patient care downrange. We used a prototype app, Patient, which was developed specifically for interfacing with the TCCC and MACE prototype apps. Read More »

House Appropriators released draft legislation [PDF] on Wednesday that appears to increase funding levels for the Electronic Government Fund, the source of financial support for government financial and data transparency websites, in a hint of things to come at tomorrow's mark-up. Read More »

As Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of Partners Healthcare’s Center for Connected Health, looked out upon a crowded ballroom at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel Thursday afternoon, he was reminded of a concept hatched roughly two decades ago. “We had the crazy idea that the doctor and the patient didn’t have to be in the same room together,” he recalled. This week, more than 1,000 healthcare exec Read More »

It’s open enrollment season for health insurance, and many Americans are getting a painful shot of reality – a hefty increase in the cost of their annual premium. Just in time for the season, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the average annual premium for family coverage rose 9 percent this year….at a time when the average American’s pay rose 2 percent. Read More »

Oracle last week quietly announced the addition of new extended capabilities in MySQL Enterprise Edition, confirming the adoption of the open core licensing strategy, as we reported last November. Read More »

Red Hat’s $136m acquisition of open source storage vendor Gluster marks Red Hat’s biggest buy since JBoss and starts the fourth quarter with a very intersting deal. Read More »

New health IT was anywhere and everywhere in 2011, promising ways to streamline data and increase patient care. Now, with even more technology on the cusp of the mainstream market, it’s only natural to wonder what’s the best. Read More »

Josh Jarrett, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered today's keynote at the Open Education Conference with a simple message (but no simple answer): Access alone is not enough to help people realize their dreams. Read More »

The Veterans Affairs Department plans to buy software that can manage up to 100,000 Apple iPads and other tablet devices on its network, VA said in an information request to industry last week. Read More »