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 -

How to Fix the EHR Mess

Matthew Hahn, MD. | MatthewHahnMD.com | June 12, 2017

Computers, more specifically, electronic health records (EHRs), will someday revolutionize the practice of medicine. In fact, successful computerization of medical care is the most critical step necessary to transform the American health-care system from its current sorry state to the 21st century system of our dreams. It is ironic, then, that today EHRs represent one of the worst problems plaguing medical professionals. At this point, many physicians would say that EHRs have created more problems than they have fixed. The most important question is how do we get from where we are to where we need to be?...

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How to Fix the EHR Mess We’re In

Matthew Hahn | Kevin MD | June 25, 2017

Computers, more specifically, electronic health records (EHRs), will someday revolutionize the practice of medicine. In fact, successful computerization of medical care is the most critical step necessary to transform the American health care system from its current sorry state to the 21st-century system of our dreams. It is ironic, then, that today EHRs represent one of the worst problems plaguing medical professionals. At this point, many physicians would say that EHRs have created more problems than they have fixed. The most important question is how do we get from where we are to where we need to be?...

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How to Get Patients to Take More Control of Their Medical Decisions

Laura Landro | Wall Street Journal | February 28, 2017

For years, people have been urged be more active in their own care. Now providers are giving them better tools to make that happen. They’re told they need to do more to monitor their chronic conditions. They are directed to be more active in deciding what treatments to have, or whether to treat a condition at all. That has proved easier said than done. For some people, it’s a matter of feeling intimidated: Better to let the doctors decide. Some are overwhelmed by the choices they have to make about their care, which seem to get more complex every year. At the same time, many doctors are reluctant to change old ways of working...

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How To Hack The System To Change Government

Tom Shoop | Nextgov | July 25, 2013

Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of the Code for America initiative who is now working for the Obama administration as deputy chief technology officer, has been in government for 37 days -- 51 if you count weekends. Read More »

How To Join (Or Start) A Civic Tech Movement Where You Live

Luke Fretwell | GovFresh | November 1, 2012

For those of you interested in starting or joining the civic technology movement where you live, watch Code for America Brigade program director Kevin Curry discuss how designers and developers are doing just this everywhere across the United States. Read More »

How To Lead A Team To Greatness, From The Man Who Sequenced The Human Genome

Mark Micheli | Nextgov | June 5, 2013

From sequencing the human genome to running the largest biomedical research agency in the world, Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, has a record of harnessing complex public institutions to get things done. Read More »

How To Make Money With OpenStack

Sean Michael Kerner | Datamation | October 18, 2012

The open source OpenStack cloud effort isn't just about technology, it's also about money - lots and lots of money. Read More »

How to Make Your Government Agency More Innovative

Tom Fox | Washington Post | June 5, 2012

The words innovation and government may not be synonymous, but “the times, they are a-changin.” Last month, the White House launched a Presidential Innovation Fellows program that will bring in 15 innovators from outside government to provide expertise on five technology projects. Read More »

How To Provide Open Access?

Ry Rivard | Inside Higher Ed | June 5, 2013

Scholarly publishers want to keep hosting taxpayer-funded research that will soon be made public free of charge. The publishers unveiled a plan to do so Tuesday by arguing they could save the federal government money. The plan also allows publishers to keep at least a piece of a pie they now own. Read More »

How to Stop Big Data from Becoming Big Brother

Brian Proffitt | IT World | June 11, 2012

As big data and the requisite mega-analysis that goes along with it becomes more common, there is an increasing outcry from voices in our society questioning whether big data is becoming Big Brother.

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How to Write Documentation That's Actually Useful

Steven Vaughan-Nichols | Enterprise.Nxt | July 10, 2017

Programmers love to write code, but they hate to write documentation. Developers always want to read documentation when they inherit a project, but writing it themselves? Feh! How common is this? A recent GitHub survey found that "incomplete or outdated documentation is a pervasive problem," according to 93 percent of respondents. Yet 60 percent of contributors to the open source code repository say they rarely or never contribute to documentation. Their reasoning, for both the open source projects and their own applications? A common attitude that "documentation is for 'lusers' who don't write good code!"...

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How VA Is Driving Telemedicine

Adam Mazmanian | FCW | February 13, 2014

Telemedicine, or the broader term telehealth, allows patients to receive medical examinations from primary care physicians, consult with specialists, participate in one-on-one psychotherapy or counseling, and share diagnostic information using videoconferencing and other electronic communications tools. It has mainly been used to reach those who live in rural areas, but its influence is spreading. Read More »

How VA Is Using Big Data To Keep Patients Out Of The Hospital

Lara Shane | Government Executive | December 23, 2013

The Partnership for Public Service and IBM Center for The Business of Government recently issued “From Data to Decisions III: Lessons from Early Analytics Programs,” which examines successful early government users of data to see how they got started, what sustained them and how the data was used to improve mission-critical programs. Read More »

How Virtualized Systems Provide A Strong Platform For Business Continuity

Chris Preimesberger | eWEEK | June 10, 2013

Today’s virtualized systems provide a sound platform for business continuity because the platforms and networking are stronger and more agile than they were even a few years ago. Read More »

How VMware Embraced Its Open Source Nemesis

Cade Metz | Wired | July 24, 2012

VMware just spent $1.26 billion to secure its place in the future of computer networking. But in acquiring the swashbuckling Silicon Valley startup Nicira, the virtualization giant is also shifting even further into the world of open source software, a world it was once very much at odds with — and in some ways still is. Read More »