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 -

The 128-Byte Data Field That Could Save Lives And Billions Of Dollars

Dan Munro | Forbes | March 25, 2013

I can easily think of 5 articles that highlight the extraordinary waste and cost of the U.S. healthcare system. [...] The PwC report concluded that about $1.2 trillion was wasted – each year. Here’s how PwC further categorized that waste... Read More »

The 2012 DMCA Rulemaking: What We Got, What We Didn’t, And How To Improve The Process Next Time

Corynne McSherry and Marcia Hofmann | Electronic Frontier Foundation | November 2, 2012

Last week the Librarian of Congress issued his final decision (pdf) limiting copyright owners’ ability to sue you for making full use of the works you buy.  The short version: it’s a mixed bag. Read More »

The 2013 OpenStreetMap (OSM) Report - Over 1 Million Contributors!

Glenn Letham | GISuser.com | June 7, 2013

Just in time for the 2013 SOTMUS event taking place June 8-9 in San Fran, The 2013 OpenStreetMap Data Report - some stunning and interactive data visualizations that show how active the OpenStreetMap community is, how fast it continues to grow, and how competitive the open data community is becoming. Read More »

The 8 Steps to Amazon Entering the Health Care Market

DJ Wilson | State of Reform | September 11, 2017

This is a thought experiment:  What if Amazon really wanted to go all in in the health care sector?  What might that look like?  What would their strategy be?  Where could they deliver value? Amazon looks for industries that are not sensitive to the customer, that have profits or premium pricing based on barriers to entry (often capital related), and looks to exploit those opportunities. It’s pretty straight forward.  And, whether that industry is cloud storage space or groceries or “last mile” distribution networks, Amazon is thinking about it...

Read More »

The @UN Deputy Secretary-General Writes About Why Toilets Matter

Jan Eliasson | Elsevier Connect | April 8, 2014

Why do toilets matter? They matter because they prevent disease and malnutrition, helping children to survive and thrive, communities to flourish and nations to prosper. Every dollar spent on sanitation brings a five-fold return in health and productivity. That is why, community by community, town by town, country by country, we need action to provide sanitation for all. Read More »

The ACO Failure Hypothesis: Likely But Not Inevitable

Les Funtleyder | The Health Care Blog | April 28, 2013

We recently participated in a program at Columbia Business School’s Healthcare Program on whether ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations) will fail. For those of you that don’t know, ACOs are one of the structures promulgated by PPACA (aka Obamacare) designed to encourage better cost control and quality improvement in the healthcare system. Read More »

The AIDS Crisis Is Far From Over In Black America

Brian Resnick | National Journal | June 27, 2013

The one map to show how disproportionately HIV affects black America. Read More »

The AMA's Specific Problem With ICD-10 Implementation

Carl Natale | Government Health IT | June 28, 2013

The American Medical Association's (AMA) decisions to reaffirm it's vigorous opposition to ICD-10 implementation and ask for a two-year grace period surprised me. Read More »

The Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC)

Press Release | Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC) | May 22, 2014

Act now, or face catastrophic post-antibiotic era Read More »

The Anxiety of Waiting For Test Results

Jan Hoffman | New York Times | July 23, 2012

As medical records move online and state regulations loosen, many patients can bypass the doctor’s call and get the results of these tests faster, directly from labs via Web sites and apps.

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The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache cTAKES™ As A Top-Level Project

Press Release | The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) | April 9, 2013

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache cTAKES has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles. Read More »

The Army Doesn't Want You To See The Results Of Its Shady PTSD Probe

Alexander Abad-Santos | The Atlantic Wire | February 28, 2013

This past fall, the Army found out the results of a probe meant to determine if psychiatrists were reversing soldiers' PTSD diagnoses to save the government money by denying them medical retirements. Months later, they still don't want anyone knowing what's in those files. Read More »

The Association Of American Medical Colleges Responds To Phillip Longman’s “First Teach No Harm”

Atul Grover | Washington Monthly | July 3, 2013

The AAMC is very disappointed that Mr. Longman did not contact the AAMC for information or comment when he was writing his article. We are writing to clarify a number of important points that his article fails to reflect. Read More »

The Avatar Will See You Now

Jessica Leber | MIT Technology Review | June 10, 2013

Medical centers are testing new, friendly ways to reduce the need for office visits by extending their reach into patients’ homes. Read More »

The Belarusian Connection

Bill Gertz | The Washington Free Beacon | February 3, 2014

U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised. Read More »