Roger Baker, VA's assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer, said he will lead an effort to move VistA into the open source community.

Baker's decision to move VistA to open source comes after a working group from IAC/ACT submitted a report on May 4 recommending ten areas where VA could improve the program. The first was to move VistA to an open source platform.

Computerization is slowly improving the healthcare system, but it's a long way from living up to expectations.

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Vangent Inc. will help the Indian Health Service deploy an information technology health information exchange and other services under a $3.3 million contract.

The IHS, an agency of the Health and Human Services Department, provides a comprehensive health service delivery system for approximately 1.9 million Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who belong to more than 500 federally recognized tribes in 35 states.

"Community" is a term that implies a shared goal and some kind of kinship, when there is none. It's a term that implies cooperation and cohesion, when there's just too much conflict and disagreement for this to happen

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The top two managers of the Connect exchange gateway are leaving the pioneering federal health information exchange (HIE) program as it sets new directions to advance the adoption of health information exchange for meaningful use.

Dave Riley, an independent consultant who is the Connect program’s lead technical manager, and Vanessa Manchester, an independent consultant who is Connect’s program manager, will be leaving by the beginning of December, according to a federal agency advisor. Both have helped shepherd the Connect exchange development community since 2007.

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to improve the health status of American Indian and Alaska Native veterans, officials announced Tuesday. The MOU includes improving care though the development of health information technology. Read More »

Mayor Booker's success in Newark fuels the optimism with which I predict global health prosperity in 2011. Although funding will remain an obstacle in overcoming infectious disease and achieving quality health care for all, I foresee the following successes over the next year, especially in the poorest areas of the world.  Every one of these technologies has already been created, tested, piloted, and evaluated in the field, across dozens of low- and middle-income countries around the world.

HP gets a $30 million contract to build an Health Information Exchange in Texas, while GE and KeyHIE expand a health information network in Pennsylvania, and Harris takes the HIE reins in Florida.

At first glance, herbalism and software development would seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. In fact these people have a lot in common and would benefit from each other’s expertise.

Maybe Herbalists could benefit from working more closely with the open-source movement and learn from their experience. Web professionals could also find great value in learning more about herbalism and its benefits.

Current health-care information technology systems don’t work well with one another. And that’s a big obstacle to the creation of a truly universal electronic-medical record system, which proponents say could theoretically lead to more efficient care and allow for data mining to see trends, measure outcomes and show the comparative effectiveness of different treatments.

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