Several jurisdictions worldwide have developed intervention plans that are applied in case of extreme heat events; beyond their emergency sections, these plans generally include preventive measures to be implemented every year. Read More »

The Veterans Affairs Department is losing more than $110 million a year by failing to bill third-party insurance companies for medical care, according to an inspector general report. Read More »

Maintaining open source license compliance in an enterprise development and production environment can sometimes be a complex task. That's where the Open Logic Exchange (OLEX) comes into play with a hosted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution to the challenge of open source source license compliance. Read More »

Open Gov West, which took place earlier this month in Portland, Oregon, was by all accounts a success. It was full of passionate innovators, both inside and outside of government, and from all over: people who know that government can’t just be about keeping the lights on and are instead doing the hard work of changing it, both from the inside and the outside, to make it work better. Read More »

Open-source software may not sound compatible with the idea of strong cybersecurity, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sees such software, which anyone can tinker with, as a possible tool for defending government networks from both online thieves and professional cyberspies. Read More »

A joint, integrated electronic health record between the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs should be in place 4 to 6 years from now, said VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker during a May 27 press call. Read More »

The supercomputer that beat human Jeopardy champions earlier this year is now as advanced as “a second year medical student,” according to Forbes.com tech blogger, Bruce Upbin (@bupbin). Read More »

The VA isn’t perfect, but definitely is better than other health care systems I have worked in so far.  It embraces the idea of patient-centered medical home, where a primary care physician coordinates and takes responsibility for a patient’s care … the old-school definition of good medical care that has recently become popular again, especially because of its emphasis on preventive care and continuity of care. Read More »

...we were awarded the Nationwide Health Information Network Connect program. We were working on behalf of the Federal Health Architecture to integrate the largest creators of health information, like military health, the VA, and Indian Health Services, so they could share information securely with each other and then provide that information to the largest consumers of health information at the federal level...

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We’ve posted twice this week on matters related to ongoing efforts to build and sustain health information exchanges (HIEs). So it seems appropriate to round off the theme with this overview piece that looks at where HIE efforts have been, what they look like, and where they might be going. Read More »