Collaboration is effective. Human survival depends on it, and great human achievements stand in testament. But anyone who has sat on a committee, organized a community, or led an open source software community knows it can be very difficult. Read More »

The advocacy group Health Care for America Now has had a loud voice in the healthcare reform debate over the past three years. The company started a Tumblr blog titled "We are the 99 percent," where followers submit photos of themselves holding a sheet of paper, with a message as to why they choose to occupy Wall Street. The site states: "We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. Read More »

"In God We Trust," tweeted New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg this month. "Everyone else, bring data." Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P., is now in his third term as mayor of the Big Apple. During his tenure, New York City has embraced a more data-driven approach to governing, even when the results of that data-driven transparency show a slump in city services. Read More »

Open government is about to assume a higher profile in foreign affairs. On July 12, 2011, the State Department hosted an historic gathering in Washington to announce the (OGP) with Brazil and six other nations. Today in New York City, this unprecedented global partnership will launch. Read More »

In an important development last week, Open Document Format (ODF) version 1.2 was adopted as an OASIS standard after four years of hard work. And it was approved with a strong 'yes' vote and no negative votes. Read More »

A lot of groups fret about the governance and control of open source projects. Others tout their open, diversified, wide-ranging, and independent foundations as making them superior. People--and  companies--tend to be worried about making sure that they retain some type of influence over the future of an open source project that they are interested in. Read More »

Government incentives have made EMR implementation a hot topic for many medical practitioners. Everyone loves getting money back from the government, but don’t let the incentive money push you into a decision you will regret. For any practice still using paper, the sales pitch is enticing. Integrate your operations! Go paperless! Improve profitability! Read More »

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued proposed rules that will allow patients to electronically access their test results directly from labs, a move that has drawn criticism among physicians who balk at the idea. They worry that unintended consequences may arise when patients read lab results before their doctors provide a proper interpretation. Read More »

This should come as no surprise: Open source principles are great guidelines for conducting successful collaboration sessions. What wasn’t as obvious to me was that the different principles are more important in different collaboration situations. Imagine the concepts of trust, openness, transparency, and release early, release often as ingredients in a mix, controlled by a row of dials. Read More »

U.S. National Healthcare Expenditures (NHE) are $2.7 trillion in 20111 and are forecasted to grow 34% in five years. This multi-trillion dollar economy will shift its reimbursement paradigm to ICD-102 in under 24 months. ICD-10 will introduce opportunities and risks to hospitals and health plans that may be equivalent to the $148.2 billion to $500 billion in losses3 to the U.S. Read More »