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 -

A New Science Blogging Scandal: Deja Vu All Over Again

David Crotty | The Scholarly Kitchen | October 17, 2013

In something of a blast from the past, the world of science blogging reared up in collective anger over Scientific American’s censorship of a controversial post from a paid blogger, written in response to some awful behavior from a representative of one of SciAm’s business partners... Read More »

A New Tool Lets Brain Surgeons See What They're Doing

Caroline Winter | Businessweek.com | August 28, 2013

Doing almost anything with your eyes closed is usually pretty hard. Now consider that until recently neurosurgeons performed operations without being able to see their patients’ brains. Most still do, but now a Memphis (Tenn.)-based company called MRI Interventions (MRIC) is working to end the “poke and hope” practice... Read More »

A New View Of VistA

Ewan Davis | E-Health Insider | July 10, 2013

In a guest column, VistA sceptic Ewan Davis argues the US open source system might have something to offer the NHS – but not if it becomes an open source NPfIT. Read More »

A Patient In Minnesota Has Lassa Hemorrhagic Fever. (Don’t Panic.)

Maryn McKenna | Wired | April 4, 2014

News from the Minnesota Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: A Minnesota traveler returning from Africa has been hospitalized with what the CDC confirms to be Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever that is often lumped together with Ebola hemorrhagic fever, though they are caused by different organisms. Read More »

A Peek At The Open Hardware Summit 2013

Caleb Kraft | EE Times | September 9, 2013

This weekend, in the wankel-shaped dome of the Kresge auditorium at MIT, nearly 1,000 obsessed and passionate people who believe in giving away their work came together. Known as the Open Hardware Summit, this was the fourth gathering of these peculiar and wonderful people who have gathered to discuss open-source hardware. Read More »

A Pilot Site for NHS VistA in the UK

Ewan Davis | Woodcote Consulting | July 14, 2013

Moving the open source agenda require that NHS Trust submit Expressions of Interests (EoI) for open source projects under NHS England’s £260 million Technology Fund  by the deadline on 31th July. Over recent weeks I’ve been persuaded that there would be real value for the patients, the NHS and the UK health informatics industry in the creation of a UK version of an open-source EHR, and VistA would be a good place to start. Read More »

A Potential Passport for Care Coordination

Gabriel Perna | Healthcare Informatics | April 27, 2012

Steven D. Freedman, M.D. is looking to improve communication between patients and physicians, not only during the office visit, but beyond it as well.  Freedman...started up the Passport to Trust foundation alongside Mark Aronson, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, to do just that and improve the overall patient-physician encounter. Read More »

A Reboot of the Legendary Physics Site ArXiv Could Shape Open Science

Sarah Scoles | Wired | May 10, 2016

In the early days of the Internet, scientists erected their own online network, a digital utopia that still stands today. Here, astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, computational biologists, and computer scientists come together to discuss heady, cosmic topics. They exchange knowledge—without exchanging money. It’s called arXiv, and it’s where researchers go to post their ideas for discussion, sharing PDFs of their scientific articles before they’re locked behind a journal’s paywall...

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A Reminder: Online Free Speech Is A Matter Of Human Rights

Jillian C. York | Electronic Frontier Foundation | December 10, 2012

If, just a few short decades ago, someone had proposed that the Internet would be instrumental in the promotion and maintenance of human rights around the world, their proposal would have been met with skepticism. And yet, examples of Internet users campaigning for human rights abound [...]. Read More »

A Same-Sex Domestic Violence Epidemic Is Silent

Maya Shwayder | The Atlantic | November 5, 2013

Domestic violence—or as it's often referred to today, intimate partner violence—is usually discussed in the context of heterosexual relationships. But partner violence is also an issue in the LGBTQ community, a fact that has only come to light in recent years. Read More »

A Searing New Report Claims Opioid Drugmakers Spent 8 Times as Much as the NRA on Lobbying

Erin Brodwin | Business Insider | September 19, 2016

A searing new report from the Associated Press claims that the makers of opioid painkillers, the dangerous drugs at the center of the tragic overdose crisis, outspent the US gun lobby on lobbying and campaign contributions by 8:1. The report looked at the period from 2006 to 2015, when deaths from the drugs began to skyrocket. Here are some of its most striking findings...

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A Secret Court Making Secret Laws? That's No Democracy

Mike Masnick | Techdirt | July 8, 2013

Last December, well before the Ed Snowden leaks revealed some information about the FISA court (FISC) and its rulings, we had already noted that the court itself was almost certainly unconstitutional. Read More »

A Simple Definition For Open Access: A Proposal To Open The Discussion

Heather Morrison | The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics | January 8, 2013

This post proposes a shift from the detailed BBB definition of open access to Peter Suber's brief definition, as follows: Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (from Suber's Open Access Overview). Read More »

A Single-Payer System Would Reduce U.S. Health Care Costs

Ed Weisbart | Virtual Mentor | November 1, 2012

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is introducing insurance reforms that will improve the lives of millions of Americans, but we need to go much further to solve the crisis in health care. Read More »

A Small Paper Problem: The Health Exchanges Face An Avalanche Of Paper Applications

Charles Ornstein | The Health Care Blog | December 12, 2013

When HealthCare.gov and some state-run insurance marketplaces ran into trouble with their websites in October and November, they urged consumers to submit paper applications for coverage. Read More »