Arien Malec, who coordinated the development of the Direct Project exchange protocols, is leaving the government’s Office of the National Coordinator to return to the private sector. Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national health IT coordinator, said Malec’s “groundbreaking work will help healthcare providers immeasurably with exchanging information to improve patient care.” Read More »

An international scientific effort, including scientists from the University of Birmingham, facilitated by social networking, has enabled the characterisation of the deadly strain of E. coli from the recent German outbreak within days, according to research published today (27 July) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read More »

Ushahidi allows users to create and visualize categories to help organize and analyze data. But sometimes category lists get out of control, slowing report processing and compromising accuracy, or at least consistency. What I learned about the way the U.S. Armed Forces use categorization and maps at the Esri User Conference in San Diego provided an interesting lesson – when it comes to categorization, sometimes less is more. Read More »

Power Cuts in India is an initiative to collect power outage data, accessible in various formats, and provide it back for public use. Ajay Kumar, a technologist and social worker, leads a team of volunteers including moderators, web and app designers. Read More »

The processing of unstructured data, from inside and outside the enterprise, using sentiment analysis is an important new frontier in data utilization for pharmaceutical companies. Read More »

It seems like just yesterday when only the slickest kid on the block had a smartphone, but now, this revolutionary gadget is selling like hotcakes in the developing world...Thanks to low-cost Androids, the geographically-untethered smartphone is here to stay, and it simply cannot be stopped. Read More »

Within days of the E.coli outbreak in Germany that officially ended this week, scientists at the University of MarylandInstitute for Genome Sciences began cracking the genomic code of the bacteria responsible for infecting thousands and killing dozens. Read More »

We know that most “year in review” articles are published in January, coinciding with the new calendar year, but the year that’s been consuming our thoughts just ended. CapacityPlus’s second fiscal year wrapped up in June and, since we’ve been concentrating on iHRIS development over the last year for our year-end reporting, we thought we’d post a summary of our accomplishments. Read More »

A federal committee that includes a major donor to President Obama and whose company stands to profit from the panel's recommendations holds in its hands the future of health information technology policy. Judith Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems Corp., secured a seat on a panel charged with recommending how $19 billion in stimulus money dedicated to health IT be spent, despite opp Read More »