The age of gene editing is upon us. Specifically, the use of CRISPR. Amazing things are happening, proving again how clever humans are. Whether we're smart remains to be seen. For those who are unfamiliar with it, CRISPR -- more accurately, CRISPR-Cas 9 -- is a new technique for gene editing. It has allowed faster, more precise, and less expensive gene editing. It can already do more than you may realize. CRISPR has been much in the news lately, due to a new study published in Nature. Researchers successfully corrected a DNA mutation that causes a common heart disease that is sometimes fatal, especially for young athletes. In what is believed to be a first, the researchers repaired viable embryos. Moreover, they repaired most (72%) of the embryos, which is much better than previous efforts...
35th VistA Community Meeting
The VistA community will be gathering at George Mason University Center for Discovery Science and Health Informatics, for the 35th VistA Community Meeting (VCM). The goal of VistA Community Meetings is for those involved in the VistA Community to network & collaborate, i.e., to share ideas and work, with the objective of moving VistA & the VistA community forward.
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OSEHRA Innovation Webinar: An Introduction to Panorama
The Panorama Framework is an open source web development framework for VistA. Its use and development mirror classic VistA/DHCP in many ways, from security implementation to extensibility based on a menu system. Javascript is the primary development language, replacing M for all simple operations. Panorama's objective is to reuse as much existing VistA code as possible and provide a path for incremental for GUI-fication of existing VistA applications.
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7 Mistakes Your Open Source Project is Probably Making
It can be tough to start a new open source project. You have an awesome idea in your head, but it takes work to turn it into a productive, healthy, engaging community. Sadly (as seems to be the case in practically anything), the same mistakes are made over and over again by new projects. Here are some of the most common mistakes open source projects make and my recommendations for avoiding them... Of the thousands of open source projects that kick off, too many get stuck at the outset because of a bunch of discussions on a Slack channel, mailing list, issue, or elsewhere. The discussions bounce around the house, and the scope often grows more and more lavish to incorporate the many, sundry ideas and considerations...
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The Pandora's Box of Gene Editing Is Now Open
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How VA Reform Turned Into a Fight Over Privatization
In 2014, the Department of Veterans Affairs was mired in a scandal. An inspector general’s report had found “systemic” manipulation by government officials to hide lengthy and growing wait times at its medical centers. Veterans were waiting months for appointments, and dozens may have died because they could not get treated in time. Spurred to action, Congress created a program aimed at temporarily alleviating the strain on the VA: Veterans who lived more than 40 miles from a health-care facility or who had to wait more than 30 days for an appointment could take their benefits outside the system and seek treatment from private doctors...
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OSEHRA eHMP Meet to Demo Light Enterprise Application Framework (LEAF)
OSEHRA's next Enterprise Health Management Platform (eHMP) Technical Working Group (TWG) meeting has been scheduled. The meeting will feature a special presentation by OSEHRA Member, KRM Associates, Inc. on their Light Enterprise Application Framework (LEAF) which utilizes features of eHMP. Jack Shaffer, Chief Operations Officer of KRM will outline KRM's work with eHMP as well as how they were able to create LEAF from eHMP.
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Medical Boards Ring Up Big Margins by Charging Doctors High Exam Fees
After the grueling slog of medical school, residency, and fellowship, Dr. Brian Drolet was ready to start paying down his debt. Then the hand surgeon faced another $5,660 in board certification fees. It didn’t seem right, considering what he got in return. “Let’s say you finished journalism school, went through another five years of training, and had to pay over $5,000 to take tests to be a certified journalist,” said Drolet, an assistant plastic surgery professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “You’d be curious why it was necessary at the end of all that training.”...
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Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. “We go to the mall,” she said. “Do your parents drop you off?,” I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I’d enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. “No—I go with my family,” she replied. “We’ll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we’re going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes.”...
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5 Apps Working to Improve Women’s Safety Across the World
Girls in Dharavi Diary Slum are learning how to code apps, changing the lives of people living in Mumbai’s biggest slum. The project aims to empower and educate girls from the Dharavi slum, giving them vital skills to thrive in a digital world. In a country where education for girls is considered secondary to maintaining the family home, this programme is revolutionary in changing the way India is looking at education for girls...
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Why Apple and Other Tech Companies Are Fighting to Keep Devices Hard to Repair
Apple is the largest company on Earth by market cap, and its success is derived from selling brand-new high-end smartphones consistently month after month. At the peak of its iPhone business, back in 2015, Apple sold a staggering 231.5 million smartphones. Though sales have begun to slow, that one device alone still accounts for more than 50 percent of Apple’s entire business. The company’s second quarter earnings results for 2017, reported on Tuesday, showed a quarterly profit of $8.7 billion, a majority of which came from the sale of 41 million iPhones...
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