VistA and Related 'Open Source' EHR Systems in use Across California

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across California and many other states across the U.S.  See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in California. We keep learning of more sites from members at the WorldVistA meeting taking place this week at George Mason University. Read More »

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Health Domain Working Group

Details
When: 
May 31, 2013 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Sponsor: 
Open Geospatial Consortium

An ad hoc Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (http://www.opengeospatial.org) Health Domain Working Group meeting will be held May 31st 2013, from noon until 2:00 p.m. EST. The meeting is being held as a webinar, free and open to all who are interested. Register here. The purpose of the meeting is to review a draft charter for an OGC Health Domain Working Group.

This proposed working group would support collaboration, exchange of best practices, and assimilation of requirements for new open encodings, interfaces, best practices and extensions to spatial standards serving needs in the health care marketplace. Those of us who drafted the charter seek an open spatial standards framework for health mapping, spatial analysis, and hospital planning and operation. See more this recent OGC Blog post. Read More »

Top 5 Misconceptions About Open Source In Government Programs

On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates 'preference' for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption... Read More »

Is Epic Stifling Health IT Innovation?

Anne Zieger | Hospital EMR & EHR | April 30, 2013

In many ways and definitely based on the buzz, Epic is at the top of the hospital EMR market. According to one estimate, about 40 percent of the U.S. population has its medical information stored in an Epic EMR, a stunning number given the level of competition in the hospital EMR space. Read More »

Kitware Turns 10

Lisa Avila | Kitware | April 19, 2013

At Kitware, we celebrated our 15th birthday on March 7, 2013. Being Kitware, we had to have a visualization component to our celebration. The idea actually started as one of the "celebrate some odd day" events that the office admin team does occasionally to keep things fun - we recently had Dip Anything In Chocolate Day (quite tasty), Pi Day (also quite tasty), and Scrabble Day (not edible - but held in conjunction with our regularly scheduled monthly Wing Day, because at Kitware there is always food involved!) Read More »

Hagel Urged To Move On ‘Game-Changer’ Agreement

Camille Tuutti | FedScoop | April 16, 2013

A House panel is calling on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to follow through on a recent plan to improve disability benefits claims processing for transitioning service members and veterans. Read More »

G-8 Seeks Apps For Agriculture

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | April 29, 2013

The U.S. government launched a new agriculture data community on Monday during a special Group of 8 conference in Washington aimed at using open data to produce better crops and more efficient markets. Read More »

Exporting From Mendeley?

Mark Sample | The Chronicle of Higher Education | April 15, 2013

As has been widely reported, the reference manager Mendeley was recently purchased for roughly $69 million by Elsevier, the Dutch publishing behemoth. Though we often suggest Zotero as a way to organize and cite research material, we have favorably recommended Mendeley as well... Read More »

DESIGN West: Open Source Hardware Searching For Business Model

Peter Clarke | EE Times | April 24, 2013

There's no doubt that engineers like the idea of open-source hardware. There are an increasing number of open-source hardware board designs – Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard and many others – that enable hobbyist projects and the reuse of board designs in commercial products. And many engineers are putting a lot of time into enabling these movements via collaborative work online and through the creation of vibrant [communites]. Read More »

CISPA Is Dead. Now Let’s Do A Cybersecurity Bill Right

Julian Sanchez | Wired | April 26, 2013

The controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) now appears to be dead in the Senate, despite having passed the House by a wide margin earlier this month. Though tech, finance, and telecom firms with a combined $605 million in lobbying muscle [updated*] supported the bill, opposition from privacy groups, internet activists, and ultimately the White House [...] seem to have proven fatal for now. Read More »