VA, Citing Taxpayer Savings, Seeks Open Source EHR

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | April 1, 2011

The Veterans Affairs Department has started to move toward an open source model to modernize its acclaimed VistA electronic health record (EHR) system. VA expects to begin conversion to an open source iteration of VistA (Veterans Integrated Systems Technology Architecture) by summer, said VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in an April 1 announcement that it will release a draft document requesting vendors to offer proposals.

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VA Looks for Open Source 'Custodial Agent'

David Perera | FierceGovernmentIT | April 4, 2011

The Veterans Affairs Department is moving ahead with a plan to set up a moderated "open source ecosystem" forming around its electronic health record, known as VistA.

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VA Advances Plans For Open Source EHR System

Nicole Lewis | InformationWeek | April 4, 2011

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released a draft request for proposals to develop an electronic health record (EHR) system based on open source technology. According to the presolicitation notice, dated March 31, VA is seeking to establish a custodial agent to help transform the Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture, or VistA -- the EHR system used at 153 major VA hospitals and more than 800 community-based outpatient clinics across the United States. Read More »

UN Meeting Urged to Back Open Access Science

David Dickson | SciDev.Net | December 7, 2003

Member governments of the United Nations are being asked this week to give their support to initiatives that offer free access to research results published in the electronic versions of scientific journals.

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Top South African Journals to Go Open Access

Munyaradzi Makoni and Christina Scott | SciDev.Net | March 2, 2009

A new scheme aims to put African research on the map by providing free access to a range of the country's top academic journals. The South African Journal of Science (SAJS) will lead the way, becoming the first high-profile open access journal by the end of March in a pilot project lasting two years.

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How the Young Brigade Mapped the TB Genome

R. Prasad | The Hindu | April 15, 2010

When nearly 400 motivated students, with the help of a few faculty and scientists, get together voluntarily and work single-mindedly, solving any complex problem can turn out to be child's play.

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Report from Massachusetts Health IT forum

Andy Oram | O'Reilly Radar | February 5, 2011

The conflation of out-of-control health care costs, fancy new technologies, and various government mandates (not only from the US government, but from many states including Massachusetts) have forced doctors, vendors, and other people in the heath care field to scramble and order changes throughout their organizations. A couple hundred of these people came to the "Tools for Meaningful and Accountable Care" conference held yesterday by the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium.

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Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009

Bo-Christer Björk, Patrik Welling, Mikael Laakso, Peter Majlender, Turid Hedlund, Guðni Guðnason | PloS One | June 23, 2010

The Emerging Phenomenon of Open Access Read More »

Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development

Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop, Subbiah Arunachalam | PLoS Medicine | March 29, 2011

Despite improved access to the Internet, researchers in the developing world continue to face two problems—gaining access to academic publications due to the high cost of subscriptions, and getting their research published in “international” journals, because their work is either considered to be only of local or regional interest or does not meet the quality standards required by the major commercial indexes.

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On the Path to Global Open Access: A Few More Miles to Go

Editors | PLoS Medicine | March 29, 2011

It has been a couple of months now since the withdrawal of access via HINARI to medical journals in Bangladesh by several publishers caused an upset in the medical publishing world...

Although traumatic for the researchers who lost access, the incident has triggered a useful debate on the value of open access (OA; immediate, permanent free access and permanently guaranteed unrestricted reuse...

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