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 -

Estonia Using Blockchain to Secure Health Records

Medha Basu | Gov Insider | March 6, 2016

The Estonian Government will use Blockchain technology to protect citizens’ electronic health records. Digital transactions made with Blockchain technology are irreversibly recorded. The records are impossible to change because they are shared globally across thousands of computers in real time through a distributed ledger. While Blockchain has largely been used to secure payments, Estonia shows that it can be more widely implemented...

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Estonian Schools Piloting Open Source Software

Alexandra Gerea | ZME Science | March 3, 2016

Schools in Estonia’s capital Tallinn are piloting a new program, gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools, saving millions of dollars on software fees. As computers have become ubiquitous, schools are basically forced to incorporate computers in the educational process. But buying a computer for a school isn’t as easy as simply buying a computer – you have to buy useful, licensed software through public auctions, and that often costs a lot of money...

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Ethics And Risk In Open Development

Linda Raftree | Open Knowledge Foundation | November 5, 2013

Ethics around ‘opt in’ and ‘opt out’ when working with people in communities with fewer resources, lower connectivity, and/or less of an understanding about privacy and data are tricky. Yet project implementers have a responsibility to work to the best of their ability to ensure that participants understand what will happen with their data in general, and what might happen if it is shared openly...

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Ethics, Archaeology, And Open Access

Eric Kansa | ASOR Blog | January 16, 2013

The issue of open access to scholarly works recently gained renewed attention following the tragic suicide of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist charged with felony computer and intellectual property crimes involving the mass download of articles from JSTOR. Read More »

Ethiopian Kids Hack OLPCs In 5 Months With Zero Instruction

Evan Ackerman | DVICE | October 30, 2012

What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa. Read More »

eTRIKS 'open source' EU project for sharing vital disease information

Colin Smith | Imperial College News | March 15, 2013

Developing a software system that enables pharmaceutical companies, governments, academia and hospitals to share information to advance our understanding of diseases is the focus of a major European Union funded project, which is led by researchers from Imperial College London. Read More »

EU Agency Lifts Lid on Drug Data Secrets

Ben Hirschler | Reuters | July 15, 2012

Europe's medicines regulator, criticised in the past for excessive secrecy, is opening its data vaults to systematic scrutiny in a move that will let independent researchers trawl through millions of pages of clinical trial information. Read More »

EU Commission: Pilot Launched To Open Up Publicly Funded Research Data

Dillan Yogendra | Healthcare IT News | January 13, 2014

Researchers from projects participating in the pilot have been asked to make the underlying data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications and other scientific information available for use by other researchers, innovative industries and citizens. This will lead to better and more efficient science, as well as improved transparency for society [...]. Read More »

EU In 'Denial' That Sick Economy Costs Lives, Health Experts Say

Staff Writer | CNBC | March 27, 2013

Europe's financial crisis is costing lives, with suicides and infectious diseases on the rise, yet politicians are not addressing the problem, health experts said on Wednesday. Read More »

EU's Anti-Terrorist Internet Guidelines A Waste Of Money, Says Group

Jennifer Baker | Computerworld | January 22, 2013

An EU project to draw up guidelines to reduce terrorist use of the Internet has been described as a total waste of money by independent watchdog EDRi (European Digital Rights). Read More »

EUPL And CeCILL Become Compatible

Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz | European Commission | June 25, 2013

The French law free software licence CeCILL 2.1 is published, ready for being OSI approved and it is compatible with the EUPL. Read More »

EUPL And CeCILL Become Compatible

Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz | European Commission | June 25, 2013

The French law free software licence CeCILL 2.1 is published, ready for being OSI approved and it is compatible with the EUPL. Read More »

Europe Aims To Regulate The Cloud

Danny Hakim | New York Times | October 6, 2013

In a recent speech, Cameron F. Kerry, the general counsel of the United States Commerce Department, said: “It would be a sad outcome of the surveillance disclosures if they led to an approach to Internet policy-making and governance in which countries became a series of walled gardens with governments holding the keys to locked gates.” ... Read More »

Europe Joins UK Open-access Bid

Richard Van Noorden | Nature | July 17, 2012

Being the first to try something new is nerve-wracking — so it is always a relief to see someone else follow your lead. When the UK government announced on 16 July that it would require much of the country’s taxpayer-funded research to be open-access from April 2013, it was not immediately clear whether the move would set a trend or prove to be an isolated gamble... Read More »

European Cloud Users Could Shun U.S. Cloud Services Altogether

Brian Proffitt | ReadWrite | October 6, 2013

Fed up with the continuing stream of news about U.S. intelligence efforts to monitor cloud services, valuable E.U. customers may just use their own local clouds Read More »