Recently I was in Berlin at OKCon organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, and I must say it was a great event loaded with presentations and workshops; 10 hours a day, for two straight days, more than 50 sessions on 5 tracks on open data Read More »

Though it might seem to contradict the open source way, I believe it is essential for an open source project to register and protect its trademark. Think about it: You spend hours upon hours creating a project, writing code and building a reputation. The code is free, so anyone can use it, but your reputation--that’s your business. Read More »

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) intends to develop animated videos to explain the value of health IT to consumers to improve the quality of care. ONC will hire a vendor to design one or two animated videos of 10 minutes or less to be used along with other materials to help the average American understand the basic mechanics of health IT. Read More »

As I mentioned by way of the Wall Street Journal back at the end of March, Google Health was supposed to get less support under the new CEO. Read More »

...There are three significant forces converging on medical coding: Electronic health records (EHR), Computer-assisted coding (CAC), ([and] last but not least...) ICD-10. "Taken together these changes will profoundly alter how coding is performed, managed, and integrated into the healthcare delivery system," wrote Wendy Coplan-Gould, RHIA; Katie Carolan; and Beth Friedman, R Read More »

Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra named a 17-member task force on Tuesday to winnow the government's massive Web presence over the next several months and to update government policies for what justifies a new website or domain. Read More »

When violence erupted after the 2007 Kenyan elections, a team of activists produced Ushahidi – a digital open-source platform to monitor crises in near real-time. Read More »

[The] question of the myriad ways providers are going to connect in the future is in fact brought to mind by the recently released KLAS survey of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) across the country. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that the Read More »

Low-income people with Medicaid coverage go to the doctor more regularly, have reduced financial stress and generally report feeling happier and healthier than their uninsured cohorts who must depend on safety net services like free clinics or emergency rooms to access care—or forgo it altogether. Read More »

When Farzad Mostashari, MD, took the helm at ONC, he thanked his predecessor David Blumenthal, MD, for a parting gift: the draft ONC Federal Health IT Strategic Plan. Read More »