I was quoted in Bob Brewin’s today, Wisconsin reps try to derail VA/Defense open source health records system.  This is an age-old story with DHCP and VistA, and it goes back even farther to Ted O’Neill’s early HEW funding of medical informatics research.

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Five members of the Wisconsin congressional delegation asked the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments to consider using a single commercial system for their new electronic health records, a move that could benefit one of the state's largest employers, software company Epic Systems Corp. VA said it plans to stick with the open source approach it announced last month, but experts say the lawmakers' query could potentially delay the new system.

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From Bob Brewin's Blog - I'm picking up medium strength signals that top managers at the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments have a meeting this week -- possibly today -- on development of a single electronic health record for the two departments. The odds favor such an agreement -- which probably won't be announced until later this month -- with the VA VistA system used as the building block for the joint electronic record. But, I'm also told -- but cannot yet confirm -- that the entire Congressional delegation from a state that is the home to a major electronic health record company is trying to derail this and plans to modernize VistA using open source software.

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The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) introduced a health care track for the first time in 2010. The track was inspired by O’Reilly Media’s growing interest in the innovations coming out of the intersection of healthcare and technology, was constructed using research and connections to health care innovators built by Tim O’Reilly and other O’Reilly staff, and was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

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The emerging health IT company AutismSphere is working to bring traditional paper methods into an electronic form with added features and functionality. AutismSphere’s software works on smart phones and mobile devices, and it is in a beta test in a small North Carolina school district.

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Using a case study approach, the authors of this journal article examine the potential of open source biotechnology platforms for global health and development. Two initiatives relying on collaborative online platforms are analyzed: projects by the nonprofit institute Cambia and India’s Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) project. 

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Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, said on Wednesday that it has moved its Health Information System (HIS) to a private cloud-computing system, making it easier to treat and follow up with patients from any of its locations across the country...The rollout, starting January, will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) EHR system. 

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SXSW is the arts-and-music-and-technology cutting-edge hipster showcase. This year, the medical industry found a place at the table. There was a discussion on mobile health in emerging countries as well as discussions around open health data, connecting and managing health data, and health disparities among many others.

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