In a decisive break with the past, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DOD), which operate the two largest healthcare systems in the country, on Aug. 30 officially launched an open-source community to help them revamp and unify their electronic health records. Read More »

Cambodia is trying to contain the spread of malaria by using text messaging to report the disease in real time. Mobile devices are installed with "FrontlineSMS," an open-source software, allowing volunteers to send and receive malaria reports via text. The data is sent to the Malaria Information and Alert System in Phnom Penh and fed into a national database using Google Earth. Read More »

The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), on a joint path with the Department of Defense, has gone live with its open source electronic health record agent (OSEHRA) to create a single EHR for veterans and service members. Read More »

The pilot for the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER), which enables sharing of Veterans' health records will be expanded, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Thursday.  Read More »

My friends at Health Action International have asked me to moderate a session at their conference on conflicts of interest in medicine on 24th September in Cork (“Liege” in French?) so, apart from meeting interesting people and hearing interesting things, I have an excuse (not that I need one) to go to my own country.... Read More »

Lynne Maher can see the NHS entering a new phase in its development of IT. Read More »

...These are just a couple of the reasons open source and open source software (OSS) in health care are getting more attention and recognition at important conferences. Read More »

The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced plans to expand its Virtual Lifetime Electronic Health Record pilot program by adding six new data exchange sites, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 9/9). Read More »

For national and local health information exchanges (HIEs) running on the CONNECT platform, there’s a new version 3.2.1. CONNECT that uses Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) standards and governance to make sure that HIEs are compatible with other exchanges being established across the country. Read More »

The Veterans Health Administration,  the largest integrated health care system in the country, has long employed many of the approaches Medicare is pushing on all hospitals to cut unnecessary readmissions. But new data show VA hospital patients are just as likely to end up back in a hospital bed as are patients at private hospitals. Read More »