The first example Park cited was the Health Data Initiative. “Basically it’s an initiative to turn HHS into what we are calling the NOAA [pronounces "Noah"] of health data. “NOAA actually, pretty famously, not just collects tons and tons of weather data, but publishes it online in machine-readable format, downloadable by anybody for free without intellectual property constraint,” Park says. Read More »

Imagine a world in which your medicine cabinet notices that you are due for a prescription refill and calls it in. A sensor implanted under your skin detects a fluid buildup in your lungs and alerts your doctor, who decides your heart medication needs an adjustment and contacts the pharmacist to change your dosage. Read More »

In this piece, the authors raise several issues with the public health financing proposal called the Health Impact Fund. It questions the relative distribution of costs and benefits; the persistent issue of intellectual property rights; as well as a lack of alliance with existing efforts to increase innovation of and access to essential medicines for the poor. Read More »

Imagine if your life depended on software –and the source code was proprietary? That’s the dilemma faced by recently-appointed GNOME executive director Karen Sandler. who was diagnosed with a serious heart condition in 2006 that required the implantation of a cardioverter defibrillator. Read More »

Open source has been responsible for many important software products used worldwide (including, for example, the Linux operating system, the Firefox web browser) and internet resources such as Wikipedia. Read More »

If you have seen maps of the drought and subsequent famine in the Horn of Africa, including those from our FWD campaign, they probably include color-coded areas that show the extent and severity of crisis. Read More »

Sticking with her original deadline announced last year, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told a European interoperability standards forum yesterday that a public portal for access to government and public data from across the continent is on track to go online in Spring 2012. Following that, the next stage in Comm. Read More »

 One of the main recommendations is for HHS researchers to help create health text message libraries based on the best available science and to make these libraries open access, publicly available, and downloadable and usable by anyone.

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The VA has joined forces with military and private-sector healthcare providers in a pilot project that tests the value of using the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) to share data among providers that care for veterans and active military personnel. Read More »

Imagine a Facebook for scientists...A place where chemists, physicists, biologists, pharmaceutical experts all hang out. Where they upload notes, photos and detailed simulations from their latest research and invite their peers to comment and suggest improvements. Interestingly, such a site exists. Read More »