In addition to improving care, keeping patients out of the hospital, and providing useful clinical data to researchers, could medical devices help with one of the biggest contributors to escalating health costs--could they help prevent fraud? Read More »

[Ushahidi] was born in Kenya in 2007 amidst the violence following a disputed presidential election. Rotich described on stage at Wired 2011how a small team created a disaster response platform that takes input from very simple sources -- predominantly SMS and email -- and geolocates it on a map. Read More »

After the huge fight over the House's support for Electronic Government Fund, which pays for many important transparency programs like Data.Gov and USASpending.Gov, we had high hopes that the Senate would restore funding to prior levels. Our hopes have been dashed. Read More »

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in September paid out $25 million to 1400 eligible providers and $61 million to 30 dually eligible hospitals under the meaningful use EHR incentive program, according to Robert Anthony from the CMS Office of E-Health Standards and Services. Read More »

Federal officials have been quick to note the rising number of providers signing up for HITECH incentives, but a recent analysis suggests they may want to pay a little more attention to making sure the program is working the way it was intended. Read More »

The Journal of Information Technology & Politics has just published a special issue on open source software. My article "Promoting Open Source Software in Government: The Challenges of Motivation and Follow-Through" appears in this issue, and the publisher has given me permission to put a prepublication draft online. Read More »

"I think open source is the right thing to do the same way I believe science is better than alchemy," software pioneer Linus Torvald, who developed the "kernel" that's the basis of the Linux operating system, has said. "Like science, open source allows people to build on a solid base of previous knowledge…. It's just a superior way of working together." Read More »

Open source software has been referred to as a "gift economy," one where valuable goods and services are exchanged without the expectation of payment. That’s fine, so far as it goes, but when it comes to businesses involved with open source software, I think the term "reputation economy” is more accurate... Read More »

...National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, was both realistic and optimistic in his charge to attendees. “Our healthcare system is in trouble," he said. "It doesn’t keep people safe and it’s too costly. But I’m incredibly optimistic that this is the time when we’re going make this better.” Read More »

Medical imaging--first X-Rays, and later CAT scans, ultrasound, and MRIs--was one of the first areas of medicine to computerize, and images are routinely distributed in digital format around the world for diagnosis, training, and storage. Read More »