When it comes to open-source drug R&D, "the clinical side is the conservative side," says Ken Getz, senior research fellow at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. But the downturn in the economy has stimulated thinking among big pharmas.

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A leading Chinese scientist has appealed for funding to make many Chinese journals open access and give priority to domestic science publications to boost the country's scientific journals.

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By opening up its database of potential malaria drugs, GlaxoSmithKline has blazed a path that other pharmaceutical companies should follow.

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Indian traditional knowledge could soon help researchers develop new drugs for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, because of plans to make some of this knowledge publicly available.The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) has been in development since 2001, with more than 200 researchers compiling and translating traditional knowledge based on some 150 ancient texts and documenting around 200,000 medicines. It aims to legitimise traditional knowledge and protect it from biopiracy and patent claims by providing information to patent offices for cross-checking of new applications.

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  In the first step by a developing country to stop multinational companies patenting traditional remedies from local plants and animals, the Indian government has effectively licensed 200,000 local treatments as "public property" free for anyone to use but no one to sell as a "brand."

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The article starts by presenting the medical domain and its corresponding software applications, their usage in improving patient care, as well as the unique advantages that an Open-Source approach brings to the field.

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There was an excellent panel discussion Sunday at HIMSS that looked at innovation in health care with Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the United States, Peter Levin, CTO at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Farzad Mostashari, Deputy National Coordinator at the ONC. They discussed a three-pronged approach to health care innovation.

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The Health 2.0 / MAKE Developer Challenge is happening this weekend, Feb 19th, in Boston. The day is bringing developers, designers, makers, researchers, care providers, sensor-geeks, hardware hackers, patients, and anyone else interested in improving healthcare by building new applications and tools.

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Following on their success last year, Health 2.0 is hosting code-a-thons in three cities as part of their Developer Challenge: San Francisco, CA on January 29th, Washington, D.C. on February 12th, and Boston, MA on February 19th.

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Applications are now being accepted for Rock Health, a program rewarding ideas that will "catalyze innovation in the interactive health space." Rock Health's mission is to enable and empower an entrepreneurial cure for the relative lack of innovation in the health sector. The world of patient care and healthy living is foreign to the technological creativity found in social media, games and other verticals. Rock Health directly targets the gap between these ecosystems, enabling high-impact innovation.

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