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 Case For Improving Health Data Liquidity

Kristine Martin Anderson | Government Health IT | September 17, 2012

While some disagree on the right approach to transform our healthcare system, most will agree that patients must remain at the core. In order to deliver on the promise of more affordable, convenient care, healthcare decision makers should look at every decision with the patient at the center. Read More »

The Case For Interoperability For Open Access Repositories

Staff Writer | Confederation of Open Access Repositories | July 1, 2012

The purpose of this paper is to provide a high-level overview of interoperability of Open Access repositories, identify the major issues and challenges that need to be addressed, stimulate the engagement of the repository community and launch a process that will lead to the establishment of a COAR roadmap for repository interoperability. Read More »

The Case For Open Access

Bart GJ Knols | Xindex | August 30, 2012

For most of us, it’s entirely logical that medical practitioners should be familiar with the latest scientific knowledge and evidence-based practices in order to treat ailments. This forms our fundamental basis of trust in medical professionals...But what if you live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast majority of medical personnel, as well as scientists, researchers and medical students, remain badly deprived of the latest medical developments? Read More »

The Case Of The Disappearing Health Record Presentations

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | January 2, 2014

Last November I wrote a piece for our news pages detailing plans for the Defense Department’s new and long delayed electronic health record based on presentations made at an Oct. 31 industry day by the new management of the Defense Healthcare Management Systems Modernization -- or DHMSM – office in the Defense Health Agency. Read More »

The Case Of The Vanishing Bees

Tom Turner | Earthjustice | May 2, 2014

Pesticides & The Perfect Crime: In the widespread bee die-offs, bees often just vanish. One beekeeper calls it the Perfect Crime—no bodies, no murder weapon, no bees. What's happening to the bees? Read More »

The Challenge of Saving Lives with 'Big Data'

Staff Writer | BBC News | February 7, 2016

Every day, more data about our lives is being generated than ever before. When it comes to saving lives, the bigger the data the better - but what to do with it all? Ninety per cent of the data in the world has been created in the past two years alone, experts estimate - and the reason for that is technological innovation. The internet, mobile phones, cameras, sensors, bank cards and social media are just some of the items responsible for the massive volume of "big data" that is currently amassed every single second...

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The Challenges For Medical Device Interoperability

Ken Herold | News Electronics | October 23, 2012

Hospitals have complicated and connected technology ecosystems. Few places have such a diverse array of machines, skills and information, all attempting to coexist in a stressful decision making environment. Each department has an array of devices and a staff with highly specialised skills. Read More »

The Challenges of Bringing Health Care to Everyone, Everywhere

Kate Torgovnick May | Ideas.Ted.Com | June 8, 2017

Around the world right now, more than one billion people don’t have access to basic health care. That means no checkups, no vaccinations, no medications, all because of the environment in which people live. They might be too poor to visit a clinic, or they might live too far from one, but the result is the same, and often fatal. It’s a problem that troubles many. Take physician Raj Panjabi, TED Prize winner and co-founder of Last Mile Health, who trains community health workers to bring care door-to-door in remote communities in Liberia (TED Talk: No one should die because they live too far from a doctor)...

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The Chipotle Corporate Sabotage Theory Returns

Deena Shanker | Bloomberg | July 25, 2017

Yet another outbreak of foodborne illness last week at Chipotle Mexican Grill did what it usually does to the burrito chain: The stock price plummeted. It's bad news—particularly for the patrons who got sick—but it's a boon for anyone that had the foresight to short the stock. The latest outbreak was first noted by iwaspoisoned.com, a website that crowdsources reports of customer illnesses following visits to restaurants...

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The Chronological History Of 3D Printing

Jesse DePinto and Matthew Juranitch | 3D Creations | August 31, 2012

As the next industrial revolution gets closer and closer, we decided to write a white paper on the past, present and future of 3D printing. In the spirit of open source hardware, let us share our findings. Read More »

The Collateral Benefits of India's Open Source Drug Discovery Programme

Priyanka Pulla | Forbes India | April 9, 2014

India's Open Source Drug Discovery programme is struggling for lack of expertise and a research ecosystem. However, the programme's real contribution may be the creation of just such an ecosystem Read More »

The Coming KDE

Bruce Byfield | Linux Magazine | November 6, 2012

Aaron Seigo discusses KDE’s new approach to managing change and the changes coming up in the next few years. Read More »

The Coming Push For Open Source Everything

Paul Venezia | InfoWorld | July 22, 2013

When we can no longer trust proprietary hardware or software, open source becomes the only option Read More »

The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills

Julie Creswell, Reed Abelson, and Margot Sanger-Katz | The New York Times | July 24, 2017

Early last year, executives at a small hospital an hour north of Spokane, Wash., started using a company called EmCare to staff and run their emergency room. The hospital had been struggling to find doctors to work in its E.R., and turning to EmCare was something hundreds of other hospitals across the country had done. That's when the trouble began. Before EmCare, about 6 percent of patient visits in the hospital's emergency room were billed for the most complex, expensive level of care. After EmCare arrived, nearly 28 percent for the highest-level billing code...

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The Company That's Turning Activists Into Coders

Jane Porter | Fast Company | November 21, 2014

Coding isn't just for tech-wizards whipping up gadgets and apps in Silicon Valley. It has the power to create needed social change. Just ask Aliya Rahman, program director at Code for Progress, an organization that focuses on bringing more women and people of color to the tech world. While most tech diversity initiatives are focused on building a pipeline of young people to tech companies, Code For Progress, which launched in 2013, focuses on teaching social activists coding skills that they can use to address issues of inequality...

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