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 -

USHAHIDI: An Important Tool To Keep Track Incidences Of GBV

Staff Writer | The Open Institute | December 29, 2012

Four training sessions were organized on the use of Ushahidi and Gender Based Violence (GBV) data collection, on December 18th and 26th, 27th and 28th. They were attended by 108 commune/sangkat councilors and members of commune/sangkat committees in charge of women and children in Phnom Penh, Battambang, Siem Reap and Kampong Thom province. Read More »

Ushahidi: An Introduction To Anti-Corruption Mapping

Heather Leson | Transparency International | May 2, 2013

This blog post is the first of a blog series on anti-corruption and transparency mapping by Ushahidi’s Heather Leson. The series will discuss best practices and feature some of the strategies to connect policy and action with online savvy. Read More »

Ushahidi: Machine Learning For Human Rights

Rob Mitchum | Data Science for Social Good | July 15, 2013

“2-car acc @ State & Lake, both drivers injred” That short, hastily typed text message or tweet contains a lot of information that police, emergency responders, news organizations and drivers could use. Read More »

Ushahidi: The African Software Platform Helping Victims In Global Emergencies

Staff Writer | Knowledge @ Wharton | January 22, 2013

During a natural disaster or in the midst of civil violence, the immediate need for those caught up in the situation is to escape and find a safe haven. But oftentimes in such chaos, information is difficult to come by and unreliable. Read More »

Using 3D Printers to Tackle Gaza's Medical Shortages

Mersiha Gadzo | Aljazeera | September 5, 2017

The stethoscope, a staple device in modern medicine, is a luxury item in Gaza. At Gaza's largest hospital, al-Shifa, there are only one or two stethoscopes in each department; doctors left without one resort to pressing their ears against patients' chests to diagnose an illness. "That would be the best-case scenario," Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani told Al Jazeera. "If someone's full of blood, most doctors aren't going to put their ears to the chest. So, doctors are making decisions without that piece of information"...

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Using a Fitness App Taught Me the Scary Truth about Privacy Settings

Rosie Spinks | SBS | August 2, 2017

After I’d completed my usual 5-kilometre near my London flat, a stranger I didn’t know “liked” my workout—even though I had enabled stricter privacy settings, which I thought would shield my workouts from public view. This happened several more times while I jogged the same route, and then again when I was on vacation in Barcelona. Alarmed at the idea of that strangers could see the routes I run on two or three times a week, I embarked on an investigation into the privacy settings of Strava...

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Using Crowdfunding To Start A Company With A Cause

Melinda F. Emerson | New York Times | October 23, 2012

Two sisters, Kara Gorski and Kristin Gembala, have developed a bra designed to help breast cancer survivors who have had mastectomies and reconstructive surgery. So far, the sisters, who invested $25,000 from their savings, have designed and patented two styles and built a Web site. Currently, they are trying to raise money to begin manufacturing through a new crowdfunding platform. Read More »

Using Crowdsourcing to Track the Next Viral Disease Outbreak

John Hockenberry | The Takeaway | November 3, 2015

Last year's Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people. The pandemic may be diminished, but public health officials think that another major outbreak of infectious disease is fast-approaching, and they’re busy preparing for it. Boston public radio station WGBH recently partnered with The GroundTruth Project and NOVA Next on a series called “Next Outbreak.” As part of the series, they reported on an innovative global online monitoring system called HealthMap, which uses the power of the internet and crowdsourcing to detect and track emerging infectious diseases, and also more common ailments like the flu.

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Using Data to Bridge Gaps in the Humanitarian Sector

Nathaniel Manning | Devex | June 14, 2016

In humanitarian crisis response, we often don’t focus enough of our efforts on assessing needs and asking questions. In the wake of disaster, we instead get tunnel vision focused on delivering services as quickly and to as many people as possible. To help break that pattern, the relief industry has recently become fascinated with data. But we need to ask ourselves what data is truly helpful, actually useful, really helps us improve our impact, and better aids our beneficiaries. We often get excited about uncovering gems in big data archives. But the reality is that the most important and useful data is the real time feedback from those we serve...

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Using EHR, HIE To Share Vaccine Data Improves Public Health

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | July 22, 2013

EHRs are an effective tool in the fight against infectious diseases, according to a new study by researchers at the Columbia University School of Nursing.  Automated immunization reporting using EHR data helped speed the collection of vaccine data and allowed public health agencies to assemble a clearer picture of at-risk populations. Read More »

Using GitHub As A Repository For Machine-Readable Scholarly Articles

Press Release | Pensoft Publishers | July 22, 2013

Inspired by eLife, Pensoft now deposits article XMLs on GitHub Read More »

Using Innovation And Technology To Stimulate Your Local Economy

Felicity McLean | The Guardian | June 10, 2013

A pre-G8 day of dialogue is inviting social entrepreneurs to share ideas on addressing global challenges Read More »

Using Motorcycles To Survey In Haiti

Brian Wolford | Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team | May 28, 2013

As part of the CAP103 project, financed by USAID, being run in the North of Haiti right now we have started coordinating motorcycles for survey purposes. Read More »

Using open innovation and cognitive computing to solve healthcare's vexing problems

Nicole Gardner | Modern Healthcare | December 4, 2015

Open innovation can help healthcare organizations learn from each other to benefit a broader innovation network, while cognitive systems can learn from training by experts, from every interaction, and from continually ingesting new sets of data. In fact, they never stop learning. The IBM report highlights how agencies are employing open innovation across healthcare technology systems. Applying cognitive computing would further promote that innovation.

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Using Open Source PDF Technology to Solve the Unstructured Data Problem in Healthcare

If there’s one major challenge to single out in healthcare IT today, it would be leveraging the growth and usage of big data. While consumer IT made big advances in the past decade to get a handle of data by marking up content, indexing it, and annotating it for use, enterprise, and healthcare IT in particular, still need to catch up on making data actionable...This article provides insights into how using the Portable Document Format (PDF) and accompanying tools within healthcare organizations can be a powerful way to help solve the unstructured data challenge, speed up processes, and reduce the costs for document handling.

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