The Right Way to Handle Data Theft

Bob Brewin | NextGov | September 30, 2011

Comparisons tend to be invidious, but it's worth looking at how the Veterans Affairs Department manages the breach, loss or theft of data versus the Military Health System. Read More »

Military EHR Looks to Bridge the Civilian Gap

Suzanne Kubota | FederalNewsRadio.com | September 30, 2011

The Virtual Lifetime Electronic Health Record, or V-LER, is the cornerstone of health information sharing between the Defense Department and the VA. Two recent pilot projects show that interoperable records and data exchange are tantalizingly close. Read More »

A Virtual Response to a Real Disaster in Nepal

Sapana Sakya | Nepali Times | September 30, 2011

"An 8 magnitude has just hit Kathmandu. There is utter chaos, fires are raging and there is a communications blackout," announced Suresh Ojha into the phone on a real-time simulated conference call on 25 September, exactly a week after an earthquake devastated eastern Nepal. Read More »

EU Puts Millions into Embedded System Modelling

Staff Writer | ElectronicsWeekly.com | September 30, 2011

The EU is funding the development of methods and tools for formal modelling, verification and validation "which will make it possible to produce precise models for embedded systems and help eliminate design errors before projects go into the manufacturing stage", said the University of Southampton. Read More »

Why Aren’t You Using the VistA EMR?

Katherine Rourke | Hospital EMR and EHR | September 26, 2011

For years, health IT pundits have marveled at the VA’s open source EMR, VistA, which has long had the reputation of being one of the best platforms available anywhere...Despite [this], hospitals have been slow to adopt the VA’s wonder child. Why? Read More »

HealthIT.Gov Videos for Patients & Families

Peter Groen | Open Health News | October 7, 2011

HealthIT.Gov now has a multi-media page contaioning a range of video presentations by health care providers and managers about their experiences in implementing and using health IT systems like Electronic Health Records (EHR) and how it relates to patients and their families.  See videos at HealthIT.Gov

Read More »

Genomic Information, EHR Systems, & Open Source

Next generation electronic medical record (EMR) will contain genomic information modules and provide predictive care capabilities supporting the continued movement towards more personalized medicine. Much of the work on genomic information systems being done involves extensive collaboration between public and private sector organizations with a heavy emphasis on standards and 'open source' solutions.

Read More »

Merge Healthcare Releasing a Free Medical Imaging Cloud-based Service

Brenda Stewart | Merge Healthcare News | October 5, 2011

Merge Healthcare, a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions, has developed and will shortly be launching Merge Honeycomb, a revolutionary new cloud-based service that will enable users to upload, download, view, and share medical images – at no cost. Merge Honeycomb will be the nation’s largest medical imaging sharing network and is open to anyone. Merge Honeycomb will officially be launched at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Conference in Chicago in November, 2011. See Merge Healthcare.

Read More »

Nutrition & Diet: Free Open Source and/or Low Cost Solutions

Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet and good nutrition. For help, consider using some of the growing number of high quality, free open source and/or low cost  Diet & Nutrition software products now readily available to you. Read More »

VA Prepared for New Employee Mobile Devices on Oct. 1

Alice Lipowicz | Federal Computer Week | September 29, 2011

The Veterans Affairs Department is on track to begin allowing additional types of mobile devices on its networks starting Oct. 1, but will start slowly with only about 1,000 users, according to Roger Baker, CIO and assistant secretary for information and technology.
Currently, the VA has about 17,000 Blackberry users. Read More »