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 Wrongheaded Law That's Making Your Food Less Safe

Andrew Cohen | The Week | March 12, 2014

If the cows providing your milk were being drugged up and abused, you'd want to know, right? Late last month, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter signed into law a measure that makes it a crime, punishable by up to a year in prison, for someone not authorized to be in an "agricultural production facility" to "make audio or video recordings of the conduct" inside that facility. [...] Read More »

The Year In Healthcare Charts

Dan Munro | Forbes | December 30, 2012

There were a few charts that made the radar this year. In some cases, the data is older than 2012, but all too often, the data hasn’t really changed or improved with age. Read More »

The Year In HIE: Public, Private Sectors Prodded To Interoperability

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | December 23, 2013

From the start, 2013 brought some the most scrutiny ever devoted to the issue of interoperability, inside the world of healthcare and broadly in the public. Read More »

The ‘Avon Ladies’ Of Africa

Tina Rosenberg | New York Times | October 10, 2012

What if every time people came up with a new product, they also had to devise a completely new way to sell it?   Imagine that we had no Amazons, eBays, Targets or Walmarts — no distribution chain at all, and no stores near potential buyers.  Nor is there a way for potential customers to learn about the product. Oh, and they can’t afford it anyway — they can’t afford much of anything... Read More »

Theme of 2015 International Open Access Week to be “Open for Collaboration”

Press Release | SPARC | March 4, 2015

SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced that the theme for this year’s 8th International Open Access Week will be “Open for Collaboration.” The theme highlights the ways in which collaboration both inspires and advances the Open Access movement—from the partnerships behind launching initiatives such as PLOS and ImpactStory, to the working relationships the community has established with policymakers that have delivered Open Access policies around the world.   The theme also emphasizes the ways in which Open Access enables new avenues for collaboration between scholars by making research available to any potential collaborator, anywhere, any time.

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There Is Something Magical About Firefox OS

Rob Hawkes | Rawkes | September 12, 2012

Over the past year and a half I've been spending more and more of my time working with Mozilla's latest project, Firefox OS. During that time I've fallen in love with the project and what it stands for, in ways that I've never experienced with a technology platform before. Read More »

There's a Linux-Powered Car in Your Future

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | ZD Net | January 5, 2017

Linux is everywhere. And, I mean everywhere. You name it, home electronics, smartphones, and, of course, computers. But, one place you probably didn't think of Linux living is sitting in your driveway right now: Your car. If it's not already, your car will soon be running Linux. The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) group's membership is a who's who of car manufacturers. This includes: Mazda. Suzuki, Honda, Nissan, Ford, and the world's largest automobile company: Toyota. And, their numbers are only increasing...

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There's No Simple Fix To HealthCare.gov

Brian Proffitt | ReadWrite | October 25, 2013

Despite what some pundits and vendors are saying, there is no one fix for the Affordable Care Act's flagship website. Read More »

There’s a Disaster Much Worse than Texas. But No One Talks about It

Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian | September 1, 2017

A quick quiz. No Googling, no conferring, but off the top of your head: what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian disaster? If you nominated storm Harvey and the flooding of Houston, Texas, then don’t be too hard on yourself. Media coverage of that disaster has been intense, and the pictures dramatic. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this supposedly once-in-a-thousand-years calamity – now happening with alarming frequency, thanks to climate change – was the most devastating event on the planet...

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There’s A Major Foodborne Illness Outbreak And The Government’s Shut Down

Maryn McKenna | Wired | October 7, 2013

Late-breaking news, and I’ll update as I find out more: While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. Read More »

There’s A Word For VA’s Paperless Claims System

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | April 10, 2013

The Veterans Affairs Department’s paperless claims processing system -- the Veterans Benefits Management System, known by its acronym VBMS -- should be renamed VBMess, an unidentified VA claims employee told the VAWatchdog blog today after a series of outages this week. Read More »

There’s Nowhere Cooler Than Here

Robert Otto | Nextgov | May 7, 2013

With the day-to-day challenges feds face in government IT, it is easy to overlook an important fact:  They have one of the best jobs in the world. Not necessarily the easiest or the best paid. Rather, one of the most satisfying and consequential. They have an opportunity to work with a variety of technologies to address issues of critical importance... Read More »

These $100 3-D-Printed Arms Are Giving Young Sudan War Amputees A Reason To Go On

Eleanor Goldberg | Huffington Post | January 23, 2014

Fifty thousand people, many of whom are children, have lost limbs in the war in Sudan. The number of victims is staggering, but one company is working to help by developing inexpensive prosthetics that can be made in about six hours. Read More »

These 9 Cities Will Code For America In 2013

Luke Fretwell | GovFresh | October 2, 2012

Code for America announced the 9 cities that will participate in its 2013 fellowship program. The 2013 partner cities include Kansas City, Las Vegas, Louisville, New York City, Oakland, San Francisco, San Mateo County (Calif.), South Bend and Summit County (Ohio). Read More »

These Aren’t Mixed Results: Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations Worked

Mike Miesen | Project Millennial | July 16, 2013

After a slew of disheartening press releases from CMS about the Affordable Care Act’s growing pains, the Obama Administration is probably quite happy to see the initial results of one of the law’s most important provisions: Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). You should be, too. Read More »