Tim O’Reilly framed the discussion with a question: “What if government regulation wasn’t all 19th century stacks of paper, but operated with the efficiency of Google search?” The question is at the heart of Government 2.0, the effort to use data and technology to transform government into a platform for innovation. Read More »

The Veterans Affairs and Defense Departments have provided details on how they will rely on a graphical user interface to knit together current aging and proprietary systems into their planned integrated electronic health record (iEHR), providing a common look and feel. The shared interface will unify what the providers, employees and patients see even as functions and systems change on th Read More »

A DELEGATION of senior health service managers and doctors is in Washington this week to examine information technology and systems which are being used by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in the US. The Department of Health said the trip to Washington was intended to develop a clear understanding of the capacities and advantages of a particular system, known as VistA, which was in Read More »

In any emergency, be it natural disaster or man-made, long- or short-term, people’s lives are turned upside down. Knowing what’s happening, where to go for assistance and who to call for help is crucial to their survival and recovery. Read More »

...perhaps the time has come for a radical re-think. One sweeping change might be to mandate the use of open-source software across the health service. Yes this would be disruptive in the short term, but it could promote inter-operability between different parts of the NHS because the open standards would be published openly.

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IBM’s revolutionary Watson technology now has its first commercial application. The sophisticated data retrieval and analysis system, which was seen in February handily defeating the top human contestants of the "Jeopardy!" quiz show, will be helping doctors and clinicians at WellPoint to treat cancer patients.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) published its “Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2011-2015” this week, outlining five strategic goals. During the public comment period, the ONC received 240 responses, Jodi G. Daniel, JD, MPH, director of the office of policy and planning at ONC, said in a HealthITBuzz blog post from Sept. 12. Read More »

Kitware’s data publishing team just announced the release of a new major version the Insight Journal. The Insight Journal is an open access journal covering scientific domains from visualization to image computing. Since its launch in 2006, the Insight Journal (IJ) has become a central resource for scientific developers around the world. Nowadays, the IJ counts more than 2300 users and hosts more than 490 publications and 840 reviews. The unique characteristics of the IJ include free and open access to not only articles and reviews but also datasets and source code. Read More »

These days, open source software has become entrenched in most industries. For example, the open source Linux operating system is an accepted corporate workhorse, and other open source tools run everything from Web sites to massive database efforts. Over the next year or two, as practices wrestle with the cost of installing and managing EHRs, expect some savvy physicians and practice managers to give open source technology a try. Read More »