Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an IT system to improve the health and well-being of medically underserved populations through personalized interventions. Called imHealthy, the system—which includes a mobile app, open source EHR and web portal—was specifically designed by a multidisciplinary research team for the FOCUS Pittsburgh Free Health Center. However, researchers are hoping the solution will serve as a model for free clinics in other major cities across the country. According to Leming Zhou, assistant professor in the Department of Health Information Management at the University of Pittsburgh, he and his colleagues intended imHealthy to be a user-friendly, scalable, easy-to-use system to help clinics provide a comprehensive well-being assessment for those living in medically underserved communities.

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Maya Varma did something at the age of seventeen that many people will never even accomplish in their lifetime—she invented a device that can save lives. Varma, now a rising sophomore at Stanford University, won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation at the Intel Science Talent Search in 2016 for designing an inexpensive pulmonary function analyzer for the diagnosis of five pulmonary illnesses. Unlike the typical devices that hospitals use to diagnose lung diseases, Varma’s invention is exceedingly affordable, with the necessary materials costing a measly $35...

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Oracle wants to end its leadership in the development of enterprise Java and is looking for an open source foundation to take on the role. The company said today that the upcoming Java EE (Enterprise Edition) 8 presents an opportunity to rethink how the platform is developed. Although development is done via open source with community participation, the current Oracle-led process is not seen agile, flexible, or open enough. ”We believe that moving Java EE technologies to an open source foundation may be the right next step, to adopt more agile processes, implement more flexible licensing and change the governance process,” Oracle said in a statement...

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More than 10,000 dead, hundreds of thousands affected, and a world paralyzed with fear at the prospect of contagion. It is hard to fully grasp the impact of the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the valor of those who put their own lives on the line to save the lives of others. But among the countless stories of human tragedy and heroism, it's now known what a vital role open-source software played in supporting doctors during critical times...

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Stringent infection control requirements at Ebola treatment centers (ETCs), which are specialized facilities for isolating and treating Ebola patients, create substantial challenges for recording and reviewing patient information. During the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, paper-based data collection systems at ETCs compromised the quality, quantity, and confidentiality of patient data. Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to address such problems, with benefits for patient care, surveillance, and research. However, no suitable software was available for deployment when large-scale ETCs opened as the epidemic escalated in 2014...

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Not many teens can say they attend an Ivy League school and perhaps even fewer can claim an invention to their name. This is not the case for 17-year-old Maya Varma, an engineering student and intern at Stanford University who has developed a low-cost 3D printed device that can analyze a patient’s breath and help to diagnose pulmonary diseases. Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people suffer from respiratory conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and restrictive lung disease. In fact, respiratory diseases and infections are the third leading cause of death, after cancer and heart disease...

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Interest in healthcare blockchain continues to grow as organizations realize the potential data sharing advantages. Blockchain is not currently used in healthcare, but open source projects, such as Hyperledger, are working to develop blockchain standards that can eventually be used in healthcare. Entities are showing genuine interest in blockchain and are currently working on projects for future adoption, according to Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf...

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As the healthcare industry continues to wrestle with interoperability challenges, two standards are poised to play a central role in facilitating the electronic exchange of health information—one is a blunt tool for data sharing, while the other is a surgical instrument. First adopted in 2012 as part of the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT’s 2014 Edition final rule, the Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) version 1.1—developed through the joint efforts of ONC and Health Level Seven (HL7) International—is now widely used among healthcare providers...

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Many Americans can’t remember anything other than an economy with skyrocketing inequality, in which living standards for most Americans are stagnating and the rich are pulling away. It feels inevitable. But it’s not. A well-known team of inequality researchers — Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman — has been getting some attention recently for a chart it produced. It shows the change in income between 1980 and 2014 for every point on the distribution, and it neatly summarizes the recent soaring of inequality...

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HfS’ Saurabh Gupta recently caught up with Brian Behlendorf (see bio), the Executive Director of Hyperledger at the Linux Foundation. Brian was a primary developer of the Apache Web Server – the most popular web server on the internet...Two decades after developing the Apache HTTP server that played a key role in giving us the internet and the web, Brian is reimagining our world again with blockchain. We discussed a range of topics around the reality and practicality of blockchain for enterprises along with the one wish that he wants to come true...

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