News

Summaries of open source, health care, or health IT news and information from various sources on the web selected by Open Health News (OHNews) staff. Links are provided to the original news or information source, e.g. news article, web site, journal,blog, video, etc.

See the following -

Deconstructing the CDC’s ‘Snapshot’ Estimates

Ryan McNeill | Reuters | September 7, 2016

In 2013, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released estimates of how many people in the country die every year from antibiotic resistant infections: 23,000. The agency estimates that an additional 15,000 die annually from Clostridium difficile, an infection linked to long-term antibiotic use. The estimates, the agency said at the time, provided the “first snapshot of the burden and threats posed by antibiotic-resistant germs having the most impact on human health”...

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Deep Dive: Software Patents And The Rise Of Patent Trolls

Adi Kamdar and Daniel Nazer | Electronic Frontier Foundation | February 28, 2013

Beloved podcasts like the Adam Carolla Show and HowStuffWorks are under attack. They and other podcasts are getting sued for, well, podcasting. And they're not the only victims—developers are being targeted for building mobile apps, and offices around the nation are being attacked for using ordinary networked scanners. Read More »

Defense & Energy Ranked Top Departments in Open Source Use

Camille Tuutti | ExecutiveBiz | March 15, 2011

The U.S. Defense and Energy departments have been deemed leading agencies when it comes to transparency and the use of open source technologies, reveals a survey by Open Source For America (OSFA) examining which federal departments were making the most of open-source technologies. Read More »

Defense and VA Eye Commercial System for Managing Medical Tests

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | June 15, 2012

The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments have decided to focus on commercial products for a system to track laboratory work such as blood tests within their integrated electronic health record.

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Defense And VA To Congress On Health Records: It's The Data, Not The Software

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | July 10, 2013

Top officials at the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments said Wednesday they will create a system to exchange standard clinical health data, which will allow the departments to develop a single, shared electronic health record without the need to build a joint system from scratch. Read More »

Defense Contractors Vastly Outnumber Troops In Afghanistan

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | May 30, 2013

For every U.S. service member serving in Afghanistan, there are 1.6 Defense contractors on the ground (and on the payroll) in supporting roles. Contractors make up 62 percent of the force there -- 108,000 versus 65,700 troops, watchdog agency reports reveal. Read More »

Defense Department Needs to Embrace Open Source or Military Will Lose Tech Superiority

Ms. Smith | Network World | August 31, 2016

The Department of Defense needs to move past open source myths that have been debunked and jump on the open source bandwagon or the Department of Defense (DoD) and U.S. military will not be able to maintain tech superiority, warns a Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report. Open source software is used in the Pentagon, which should strongly suggest that open source is not an unsecure and vulnerable hot mess. Yet the DoD overall is stuck in the past, clinging to “erroneous and unfounded misunderstandings about open source software.” Those misconceptions often mean open source is not even considered as a viable option for DoD software projects...

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Defense Department's EHR Plan May Cost Taxpayers Billions

Joseph Conn | ModernHealthcare.com | October 4, 2013

The Defense Department's on-again, off-again flirtation with the Veterans Affairs Department's VistA electronic health-record system appears to be on again. But this time, a lot of other suitors will compete for the military's affection and what likely will be billions of taxpayers' dollars. Read More »

Defense Failed To Adequately Manage Terabytes Of Iraq War Data

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | December 20, 2012

Records for U.S. forces in Iraq as of 2010 amounted to 20 to 50 terabytes of data -- as much as five times all the books cataloged by the Library of Congress -- with the information stored in an unmanaged, unstructured format with no metadata, according to an internal Pentagon report that the Defense Department Freedom of Information Act Office released Dec. 4. Read More »

Defense Health Agency Focusing On IT For Savings, Efficiencies

Amber Corrin | FCW | January 13, 2014

One of the Defense Department's newest components is at the center of one of the Pentagon's biggest IT program overhauls, but the Defense Health Agency is also looking beyond an update of electronic health records to other ways technology can empower change amid budget cuts. Read More »

Defense Health shoring up IT ahead of EHR move

Amber Corrin | Federal Times | February 6, 2015

As the Defense Health Agency moves forward in pursuit of a new electronic health records system, officials there also are overhauling IT to become a more agile, responsive organization. Top priorities for the 2015-2016 time frame include the EHR, enterprise consolidation, interoperability with the Veterans Administration, application rationalization and the standardization of enterprise activities, according to Dave Bowen, DHA CIO and director of healthcare IT. Read More »

Defense IG: TRICARE Acquisition Staff Lack Required Certification And Training

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | May 2, 2013

Procurement personnel at the TRICARE Management Activity, which had an acquisition budget of $18.8 billion in 2012,  lacked formal certification for their jobs, proper training and accurate position descriptions, the Defense Department Inspector General said in a highly critical report released yesterday. Read More »

Defense Leads Open Source Push in Government as Politicians Fail

Dana Blankenhorn | Dana Blankenhorn (Blog) | March 14, 2011

A new report being released by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a strategic think tank headed by former Sen. Sam Nunn, shows that outside the Department of Defense (DoD) open source is mainly being stymied. Apparently, when politicians get involved, money from proprietary software vendors talks loudest.

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Defense Official Backs Commercial Software for Joint Health Record

Bob Brewin | NextGov | April 8, 2011

Elizabeth McGrath, Defense deputy chief management officer, said Defense "will look first" at commercial software for the health record, followed by adoption of existing Defense and VA applications, with the last choice being in-house development. McGrath's emphasis on commercial software for the joint record conflicts with the open-source software approach backed by Shinseki and VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker. 

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Defense Probably Goes Commercial, Not Necessarily Proprietary

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s long-awaited (in health IT circles, anyway) decision on the Department of Defense’s core health IT system has been made. The VA’s VistA system is out as the preferred DoD solution - unless it’s not. I’ll explain. Read More »