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How Congress Is Aiming To Defang Patent Trolls
A new bill in the US Congress is aimed at curbing firms that buy patents and use them aggressively to extract licensing fees—a.k.a. patent trolls. Read More »
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How Crisis Mapping Saved Lives in Haiti
The National Geographic Society has a long history of crisis mapping disasters. But what happened in Haiti on January 12, 2010 would forever change the very concept of a crisis map. Read More »
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How Cyber Hardening Can Protect Patient Privacy And Treatment
The abundance of internet-connected devices that collect and share patient data has greatly increased the “attack surface” (where an attacker inserts or extracts data) and number of possible vulnerabilities within a system. Now that medical devices can connect to home-based routers, public Wi-Fi or cellular networks to relay data to hospitals, specialists, and care providers. In addition, the software in those devices lacks cybersecurity and can be updated and reprogrammed remotely. Thus, sensitive patient information is even more prone to data breaches, and the safety of the devices can be compromised. Recent supply chain compromises, and the migration of health applications and platforms to the cloud, also add to the threat equation. This article looks at why the medical community is so vulnerable and suggests how it can better protect life-saving equipment and sensitive data from unprecedented cyberattacks.
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How Data Analytics, GIS Helps Dartmouth Atlas Influence Healthcare
The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care has more than 100 TB of Medicare claims data. This information, combined with peer-reviewed medical research, informs healthcare policy and helps institutions compare their quality metrics. Like any good atlas, it also uses data-driven maps to prove its points. Read More »
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How Data Brokers Make Money Off Your Medical Records
A growing number of companies specialize in gathering longitudinal information from hundreds of millions of hospitals' and doctors' records, as well as from prescription and insurance claims and laboratory tests. Pooling all these data turns them into a valuable commodity. Other businesses are willing to pay for the insights that they can glean from such collections to guide their investments in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, or more precisely tailor an advertising campaign promoting a new drug...
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How Did Health Care Get to Be Such a Mess?
The problem with American health care is not the care. It’s the insurance. Both parties have stumbled to enact comprehensive health care reform because they insist on patching up a rickety, malfunctioning model. The insurance company model drives up prices and fragments care. Rather than rejecting this jerry-built structure, the Democrats’ Obamacare legislation simply added a cracked support beam or two. The Republican bill will knock those out to focus on spackling other dilapidated parts of the system...
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How Disney Built A Big Data Platform On A Startup Budget
The big data world is full of small, scrappy startups using their ingenuity to build complex systems out of open source software, but the Walt Disney Company is not one of them. Here’s what goes into building a big data platform in a Fortune 100 company. Read More »
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How Do Cloud-Based EHRs Address Common Implementation Woes?
After spending thousands of dollars on an EHR system, computers, IT infrastructure, installation, and staff training, most providers hope that they never have to go through the EHR implementation process again. [...] Read More »
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How Do We Move From Cost-Increasing To Cost-Reducing Technology?
In computing, Moore's Law says costs fall by half every two years as capability improves, yet in healthcare, technology sends bills soaring. Read More »
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How Do You Change HIE Software Platforms? Very Carefully!
HealtheConnections RHIO execs detail lessons learned about changing horses in midstream Read More »
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How Do You Measure Up? New Health Gadgets Can Tell You
An array of new personal health devices aims to help you beat depression, lose weight, reduce stress or improve your fitness level. Read More »
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How DOD Embraced Bug Bounties -- And How Your Agency Can, Too
It was a Tuesday in April, and Mark Litchfield was poking around the Defense Department's Defense Video Imagery Distribution System, looking for security holes. It didn't take him long to find one. He soon uncovered a vulnerability known as a blind persistent cross-site script. It could enable any maliciously minded hacker to log in as a site administrator and broadcast whatever content he or she wanted from the DVIDS website -- which is the primary way the U.S. military keeps the public informed about its activities around the world...
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How Does FHIR Fit into Recent Interoperability Initiatives?
Over the past few months, APIs have been the talk of the healthcare industry, pushing HL7's FHIR into the spotlight for interoperability. Plenty of talk supports the position that application programming interfaces (APIs) will enhance health data interoperability, particularly a leading API standard known as FHIR. Health Level 7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR) is a data standard that helps different health applications work on the different interfaces that exist in the industry (such as an Epic Systems or a Cerner interface)...
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How Does the ONC Define HIE, Value-Based Care, Population Health?
The new ONC Health IT Playbook contains a wealth of resources and information for healthcare organizations in various stages of reform. From the very beginning stages of negotiating an EHR purchase to the complex integration of multiple care sites into a risk-based financial arrangement, there’s something for everyone at every level in this interactive, online compendium of knowledge...
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How Doubling The Student Loan Interest Rate Hurts The United States
University graduates are as vital a resource for the United States as anything that is mined, extracted, or farmed from nature. [...] In short, there is a very strong public interest for incentivizing intelligent students to aspire to a college education. Read More »
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