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 -

Unlocking The Secretive Trans Pacific Trade Deal

Staff Writer | Aljazeera America | February 13, 2014

The Trans Pacific Partnership is the largest proposed trade deal in history impacting everything from how we use the internet to prescription drug prices. Public interest groups don’t have access to the negotiations, which involve 11 countries plus the U.S., but corporate lobbyists do. Given the potential for change, should the public have a say? Read More »

Unraveling Bureaucracy At The VA, One IT Project At A Time

Tracy Mayor | CIO | June 3, 2013

How a small, fast SWAT team is improving performance at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Read More »

Unreported Robot Surgery Injuries Open Questions For FDA

Robert Langreth | Bloomberg Personal Finance | December 30, 2013

When Sheena Wilson, 45, underwent robotic surgery for a hysterectomy in May, she didn’t know the Intuitive Surgical Inc. system used by her doctor was previously tied to a variety of injuries for the same procedure. Read More »

Up Close And Personal With Twitter's Open Source Manager Chris Aniszczyk

Weston Davis | opensource.com | October 21, 2013

It's official: Twitter is a global phenomenon, and it's hard to argue against the numbers supporting that statement. What started as a small, quasi-micro-blogging company in 2006, gained steam in 2007 with the service generating around 500,000 tweets per quarter, or roughly 1100 tweets per day, and exploded to worldwide service with a staggering 500 million tweets per day by 2013. Read More »

Upcoming Digital Health Opportunities: Codeathons And The SXSW Accelerator

Steven Randazzo | HealthData.gov | October 1, 2012

For the past three years, through the Health Data Initiative, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has focused on the liberation of health data... Read More »

UPDATE 1-Apple, Google, Dozens Of Others Urge U.S. Surveillance Disclosures

Staff Writer | Reuters | July 19, 2013

Dozens of companies, non-profits and trade organizations including Apple Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc sent a letter on Thursday pushing the Obama administration and Congress for more disclosures on the government's national security-related requests for user data. Read More »

Updated IT Reform Act Would Make CIOs Presidential Appointees

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | March 14, 2013

An updated draft of legislation to fundamentally reform how the government purchases information technology gives agency-level chief information officers more authority but scales back some earlier proposals to centralize purchasing for major IT products and services. Read More »

Updated OIG 2015 work plan adds EHR issues under review

Marla Durben Hirsch | FierceEMR | June 8, 2015

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General continues to refine its scrutiny of electronic health records, adding a new focus area in an update to its work plan, but deleting several older items previously under review. The 2015 update says that for the first time, OIG will review the use of EHRs by accountable care organizations to coordinate care.

Read More »

Uproar: MariaDB Corp. Veers Away from Open Source

Simon Phipps | Info World | August 19, 2016

MariaDB Corp. has announced that release 2.0 of its MaxScale database proxy software is henceforth no longer open source. The organization has made it source-available under a proprietary license that promises each release will eventually become open source once it's out of date. MaxScale is at the pinnacle of MariaDB Corp.'s monetization strategy -- it's the key to deploying MariaDB databases at scale. The thinking seems to be that making it mandatory to pay for a license will extract top dollar from deep-pocketed corporations that might otherwise try to use it free of charge.

Read More »

Upsurge in Emergency Department Information Technology Replacements, 72% of Hospitals Dissatisfied With Interoperability & Usability Finds Black Book

Press Release | Black Book Market Research | October 28, 2015

Black Book surveyed 738 emergency department administrative and nursing managers, and 1,104 ED physicians (over half are members of the American College of Emergency Physicians). 89% of ED leaders believe their hospitals rushed to purchase new EHRs and ED systems between 2010 and 2013 for meaningful use dollars, just to see productivity fall, liability rise and connectivity stall. Read More »

Urgent Need For Long-Term Toxicity And Cancer Studies On GM Foods

Claire Robinson | Earth Open Source | January 7, 2013

A new website set up by scientists and citizens challenges criticisms of a landmark study[1] that found genetically modified (GM) maize damaged the health of rats. The group concludes there is an urgent need for long-term toxicity and cancer studies on GM foods. Read More »

US And UK Share Health Data Via Cloud

Anthony Brino | Healthcare IT News | November 15, 2013

About half a century after epidemiology studies in Massachusetts and the United Kingdom helped build the world’s understanding of cardiovascular disease and health risks, public health and population data is being opened up by the U.S. and joining international datasets. Read More »

US and UK working to strengthen use of health IT for better patient care

Press Release | US Department of Health and Human Services | January 23, 2014

As the use of health information technology (health IT) grows in both the United States and the United Kingdom, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt today signed a bi-lateral agreement for the use and sharing of health IT information and tools. The agreement strengthens efforts to cultivate and increase the use of health IT tools and information designed to help improve the quality and efficiency of the delivery of health care in both countries.

Read More »

US Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) Selects DrCloudEMR™, Next-Generation Open Source EHR

Press Release | US Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH), DrCloud Healthcare Solutions, EnSoftek, Inc. | March 18, 2013

EnSoftek’s wholly owned subsidiary, DrCloud Healthcare Solutions’ electronic health record system (EHRS), DrCloudEMR™ is selected by AFRH to implement at their Gulfport, Mississippi and Washington D.C. facilities. AFRH is procuring DrCloudEMR™ system, in support of the wellness center/independent-living-plus/assisted living/memory support/long-term care health services, to maintain the AFRH residents’ health information and records for all aspects of their care. Read More »

US Backs Push For open Access Textbooks In Arabic

Sunanda Creagh | Phys.org | February 7, 2013

The United States has backed a project that aims to translate American textbooks into Arabic and make them available without copyrights restrictions to educators and students in the Middle East. Read More »