Given that meaningful Use and CER advocates are promoting (structured) data collection for reduction of medical errors, analysis of treatments and procedures, and research for new methods it’s important to see that we’re not going to get real gains until the medical device vendors are fully connected and providing data directly into EHRs or clinical data warehouses. Read More »

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Todd Park joined us on July 7 to talk about the power of open data for improving health. His position with HHS was created by the Obama administration as a change agent. And he's taking that role seriously. Read More »

Health information technology professionals often are mystified when doctors, nurses and other clinicians don’t embrace their technology. Even taking concerns about start-up costs and interruptions into account, many health IT experts see the cost and quality improvement benefit far exceeding the downside. Read More »

A couple weeks ago I talked to two members of the popHealth project, which culls quality measures from electronic health records and formats them either for convenient display--so providers can review their quality measures on the Web--or for submission to regulators who require reports on these measures...One of my interviewees, Andrew Gregorowicz, will speak about popHealth at the Open Source convention later this month. Read More »

“TJ said his body feels like it’s on fire! Hurry!” Shouts like this one echoed through the halls of George Mason University as ten School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) students participated in a simulated malaria outbreak as part of their Technology for Peacebuilding course facilitated by TechChange. The goal of the simulation was to provide students hands-on experience using FrontlineSMS software. Read More »

On May 26 I reported that the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments selected a key component of their electronic health record system, a graphical user interface (GUI) called JANUS...Roger Baker, the VA CIO made this seem like a done deal, but I wonder if Defense has really signed on, based on language in the June 30 Senate Appropriations Committee report on the 2012 VA budget bill. Read More »

“Now that everybody is trying to get to meaningful use, think of the resource shortage we’re going to have out there. And that’s why all of us are golden…Will there be an increased demand for nursing informaticists? Man, you better believe it,” Delaney proclaimed.
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Ian Skerrett last week suggested that there is a growing trend in favour of permissive non-copyleft licenses at the expense of reciprocal copyleft licenses. Ian asked “name one popular community open source project created in the last 5 years that uses the AGPL or GPL?”...But the question did prompt me to look for some evidence for the trend away from copyleft licenses. Read More »

Ken Banks, creator of the terrific FrontlineSMS text messaging software, has some great thoughts today on why deep knowledge of on-the-ground circumstances is important to make great software.  And he points out that technologists usually have much lower understanding of development problems than the development specialists who've been studying those problems for years, or the on-the-ground folks who have been working on those problems for years. Read More »

FrontlineSMS has recently appointed Florence Scialom into the role of Community Support Coordinator, to focus on connecting and supporting the dynamic global community of those using our software. Here, Florence shares what drew her to work at FrontlineSMS, and outlines the plans she has for her new role. Read More »