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 -

An Open Letter To Washington, D.C. From A Physician On The Front Lines.

Matthew Moeller | Caduceus Blog | March 2, 2013

I am writing this letter because I feel that our leaders and lawmakers do not have an accurate picture of what it actually entails to become a physician today; specifically, the financial, intellectual, social, mental, and physical demands of the profession. Read More »

An open model for international aid: Sanjay Pradhan at TEDGlobal 2012

Staff Writer | World Bank | June 28, 2012

Sanjay Pradhan, World Bank Institute Vice President spoke at the TEDGlobal conference held from June 25-28, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His talk focused on the theme of open development and 3 key shifts in transforming development: open knowledge, open aid and open governance. Read More »

An Open Platform Revolutionises Biomedical-Image Processing

Press Release | Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology | August 31, 2012

Ignacio Arganda, a young researcher from San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid) working for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is one of the driving forces behind Fiji, an open source platform that allows for application sharing as a way of improving biomedical-image processing. Read More »

An Open Source Approach To Solving The Farm To Table Problem In North Carolina

Margaret Gifford and John Whitehead | OpenSource.com | April 28, 2014

For many people spring means a return to the bounty of fresh, local food from farmers markets. But for the one in five people in North Carolina who are facing hunger, that bounty is not an option. This was the challenge that we—a high-tech marketer and an engineer recently relocated from Silicon Valley—set out to solve in 2009. [...] Read More »

An Open Source Project To Improve The Accuracy Of CDC's Mortality Data

Paula Braun | HealthData.Gov | June 4, 2015

As part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, which will take place world-wide on Saturday, June 6th, CDC would like to launch an open-source project to develop a Cause-of-Death companion application that will a) help guide medical certifiers through the process of filling out a death certificate and b) provide real-time feedback for common mistakes at the point of data entry. 

Read More »

An Open Source Solution For The Quantified Self Trifecta

Lt. Dan | HIStalk | October 20, 2013

The last five years have been redefining for the quantified self movement. Gone are the days that self monitoring was limited to pedometers and food diaries. [...] Over the years, this consumer-driven demand has led to a groundswell of technological advancements. The advancements in quantified self technology seem to be converging on a trifecta of quantified health: activity, vitals, and calories. Read More »

An Open Source Vision

Geraint Lewis | Health Service Journal (HSJ) | April 12, 2012

A campaign is attempting to bring VistA, an open source IT system, to the NHS. Why should you consider it? Read More »

An Overview Of The "Patent Trolls" Debate

Brian T. Yeh | Congressional Research Service | August 20, 2012

Congress has recently demonstrated significant ongoing interest in litigation by “patent assertion entities” (PAEs), which are colloquially known as “patent trolls” and sometimes referred to as “non-practicing entities” (NPEs)... Read More »

An Overview Of The AHRQ Patient Engagement Guide

Matt Mattox | Axial Exchange | July 16, 2013

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released its patient engagement guide on July 8. The insights contained in the Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Hospital Safety and Quality were field tested at 3 medium-sized hospitals across the country. Read More »

An Uncertain Prognosis for Personal Health Records

John Moore | Federal Computer Week | May 3, 2011

PHRs have so far gone the way of electronic health records (EHRs): an initial splash of attention followed by glacially slow adoption. PHR technology emerged about a decade ago and, by most accounts, remains far from achieving wide public acceptance. However, prospects might be brightening. Read More »

An Unflattering Comparison For Microsoft Surface

Evan Niu | The Motley Fool | March 13, 2013

Software giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) has never had a good track record with consumer hardware. That's why the company's departure from its modus operandi with Surface is such a big deal. Read More »

Analysis: Government’s Vast Lockers Of Data Threaten Basic Individual Freedoms

Major Garrett | Nextgov | June 12, 2013

I’m going to try to tie together strands of information NSA-style and see if a pattern emerges. I will be looking for signs that America’s historic definition and understanding of privacy are being eroded. I will also try to understand if that erosion could fundamentally alter an individual American’s relationship to government power. Read More »

Analysis: IT Experts Question Architecture Of Obamacare Website

Sharon Begley | Reuters | October 5, 2013

Days after the launch of the federal government's Obamacare website, millions of Americans looking for information on new health insurance plans were still locked out of the system even though its designers scrambled to add capacity. Read More »

Analysis: Obamacare Can't Fail

Sam Baker | Nextgov | January 6, 2014

The standard of success for the Affordable Care Act keeps getting weaker. Whether in enrollment numbers, federal savings, or the workings of its website, the White House has repeatedly lowered the bar for the law when it has missed expectations, replacing initial standards with ones that are lower, squishier, or nonexistent. Read More »

Analysis: Straightening Out the Paper Trail

Mike Miller | NextGov | February 22, 2012

The ever-changing nature of conducting business in a networked digital world has put a whole new twist on the government's paper trail. Now federal agencies must think in broader and more collaborative ways about their records management challenges. Read More »