Slowly but surely, biology and biotechnology efforts that follow open source principles are improving, and as they mature, they could have a profound effect on healthcare, longevity, disease control, and much more.

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Organizers for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) announced plans to include a new healthcare track at this year's conference, slated to be held in Portland in July. 

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Gene sequencing has gotten incredibly fast and cheap, and researchers around the world are pouring huge volumes of genomic data onto their private servers, in the hope they will sift through it all to make groundbreaking discoveries. hould so much genomic data be so closely guarded, or should it be poured into a free and open database that all scientists share?

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As we noted in this recent post, slowly but surely, biology and biotechnology efforts that follow open source principles are improving, and as they mature, they could have a profound effect on healthcare, longevity, disease control, and much more. Read More »

The Irish Government is being called upon to open up all data to citizens and enterprising software developers in a move that could drive a raft of new services to citizens, eradicate logjams and lead to greater accountability. By embracing open data principles, open source technology and cloud computing, it is envisaged Ireland could follow in the steps of the US Government and European nations like Norway that have embraced open data principles to great success.

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India’s premier science council has realised the Western model of patenting doesn’t work in India. ...“Everything is not commerce. I am asking [for] a new developmental model which is people-centric,” says CSIR’s current director general, Samir Brahmachari.

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The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments have formed a working group to pursue a joint lifetime electronic heath and benefits record for service members, veterans, and their families. Read More »

In his new book Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life, Marcus Wohlsen explores the new movement in garage-based biotech. Following in the footsteps of revolutionaries like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer in Jobs's garage, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who invented Google in a friend's garage, biohackers are attempting bold feats of genetic engineering, drug development, and biotech research in makeshift home laboratories.

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The Aurion Project, an evolution of the Federal Health Architecture’s CONNECT open-source project focused on achieving health IT interoperability using nationally recognized standards, is off to an ambitious start. The Aurion Project is chartered by the Alembic Foundation.

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The new federal center set up to launch U.S. health care into the digital age has already certified more than 600 new health information technology products and is ready to start helping providers set these systems up, its new head said on Tuesday. Read More »