Groen's HIT Blog

Blog written by Peter Groen, Senior OHN Editor & Contributing Author, on 'open source' & health information technology (HIT) issues and solutions.

See the following -

OHNews 2013 Readers Choice: Most visited 'Open Data' sources of Health Information

As we head towards the end of the year, the global 'Open Health' movement continues to grow and strengthen. Each month, the number of new 'open data' web sites and resources increases. Read More »

OHNews 2013 Readers Choice: Most visited links to 'Open Access' Publications

As we head towards the end of the year, the global 'Open Health' movement continues to grow and strengthen. Based on the number of hits by our Open Health News (OHNews) readers on links to 'Open Access' health informatics and medical publications (e.g. Read More »

Open Health Community 'Code of Conduct'

Many industries and/or organizations have chosen to establish professional ‘Codes of Ethics’ or ‘Codes of Conduct’. These codes serve several purposes:

·      to provide ethical guidance for the professionals themselves,
·      to furnish a set of principles and standards as a guide against which the conduct of the professionals may be measured, and
·      to provide the public with a clear statement of the ethical considerations that should shape the behavior of the professionals themselves. Read More »

Open Health IT Communities

There are thousands of open source health IT development projects, software products, and organizations around the world.  Over the past few years the major initiatives have started to coalesce into communities. The following is a list of some of these 'open health' communities along with links to community resources (organizations, software, projects) and news related to the communities. Read More »

Open Health News (OHN) Searches by Country & State

As more and more articles, news clips, resources, etc. on open source and health IT are entered into the Open Health News (OHN) system, the Search feature becomes a very effective tool to use. For example, I wanted to see information and news on open source and health IT activities in Africa, Asia, South America, and in selected U.S. states, e.g. Read More »

Open Health News 2012 Readers Choice: Most viewed 'Open Source' eHealth software

The global 'open source' software movement continues to grow and strengthen, especially in the field of healthcare. Based on the number of hits by readers of Open Health News (OHN) on links to 'open source' eHealth systems, the following are their top choices of interest:  Read More »

Open Source & QR Codes in Healthcare

QR Codes have been around for a while, but are just now really starting to take hold in healthcare. This is just one more short blog about this technology and its potential uses. Read More »

Open Source Dental Systems

The dental software industry has grown considerably over the past several decades. There are currently well over 40 commercial vendors that provide dental practice management, electronic dental record systems, and dental imaging systems for dental offices.

Open Source Embedded Technology & Health IT Systems

Embedded computer systems are usually designed to do a few specific functions, often with real-time computing constraints.  They are being installed within an increasingly wide range of complex systems or devices, e.g. Read More »

Open Source Hardware in Healthcare?

First there was open source software. Then came open standards, open architecture, open access, open data, open knowledge, open communities… and now we have open source hardware.  Open source hardware is just one more component of the ever growing 'open source' culture movement. Here's a brief introduction to the topic. Read More »

Open Source Space Satellites Launched

This news story in NewScientist by Lisa Grossman caught the attention of a lot of people this week – "Space station poised to launch open-source satellites". Read More »

Open Source: Just the facts, ma'am.

There are a lot of opinion pieces and blogs about the open source, open access, and open data marketplace, which is great – but most managers want to simply know what the facts are. Looking back over the past year, a number of surveys and reports have been issued by various organizations providing hard data about the growing 'open' movement. For example: Read More »

Opening Up the FDA

The President's Executive Order on Open Government Data states, "Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable." Interestingly, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), has a tradition of expansive disclosure of information and/or data it generates or collects – contrary to current practices at the FDA. Hopefully, changes being made to 'open up' the FDA will start to accelerate. Read More »

OSEHRA 2013 Summit Shines, even as DoD Shuns the Summit

The Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) Summit was held this past week in Bethesda, Maryland.  The focus was on the use of the VistA electronic health record (EHR) and other open source solutions in healthcare. Read More »

Overview of Nursing Informatics & 'Open' Health IT Solutions

Introduction

According to Dr. Susan Hamer, the Director of Nursing, Midwifery & Allied Health professionals at NHS, implementing new health information technology (IT) systems often has a huge impact on clinical practices and in the past managers had underestimated the effort and expense needed to support nurses through this change. "While there is a small group of nurses that is taking on the informatics challenge, there are too few of them at the moment," she said. "Nurses need to take a better grip of the health informatics agenda, both to secure the technologies that the profession needs to improve operations  while also enhancing quality of care." Read More »