The Veterans Affairs Department is “raising the bar” for its healthcare centers by providing online tools so veterans can compare how well the VA’s 153 hospitals perform, with the ultimate goal of spurring further improvements at those facilities. Read More »

 I recently met  A. Toni Young, founder and executive director of the Community Education Group here in Washington, DC. She has big dreams for harnessing the power of her clients’ health data but few resources to make the dreams come true.

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A software package designed to minimize the potential risks of synthetic biology for the nation's defense and security is now available to the gene synthesis industry and synthetic biology community in an open-source format. Virginia Tech has licensed GenoTHREAT, a software tool that helps detect the use of synthetic DNA as bioterrorism agents. Developed as an open-source project by a team led by Jean Peccoud, associate professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, it is being released using the Apache License Version 2.0 to ensure broad accessibility.

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The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments are considering creating a joint electronic health record (EHR) system as one of many options, a top VA official said today.

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The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments are preparing to make a recommendation by late March on a joint strategy for managing their electronic health records, a senior VA official said today.

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After spending $2 billion to upgrade its legacy electronic health record system, the Defense Department is preparing to conclude that the effort was only partially successful, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. DOD wants a new system, GAO said.

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The Defense Department is preparing for the next-generation Electronic Health Record Way Ahead  project with a study of alternatives to be discussed this month, an official said today.

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Several key leaders of a federally funded software-development project to create a common connection to the proposed nationwide health information network have formed a not-for-profit organization, the Alemic Foundation, to help carry that work forward.

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In the middle of rural Missouri there is a physicist-turned-farmer looking to redefine the way we build the world. Marcin Jakubowski is the mastermind behind a group of DIY enthusiasts known as Open Source Ecology and their main project, the Global Village Construction Set. The network of engineers, tinkerers, and farmers is working to fabricate 50 different low-cost industrial machines. Read More »

I’m researching a op-ed piece on federal health care software, and am browsing through my old proceedings from the early days of the MUMPS Users Group meetings.  These meetings were quite an entrepreneurial incubator.

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