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 -

As Fracking Booms, Growing Concerns About Wastewater

Roger Real Drouin | Yale Environment 360 | February 18, 2014

With hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas continuing to proliferate across the U.S., scientists and environmental activists are raising questions about whether millions of gallons of contaminated drilling fluids could be threatening water supplies and human health. Read More »

As Health Cost Increases Moderate, Consumers Will Pay More: Will They Seek Less Expensive Care?

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Health Populi | June 18, 2013

While there is big uncertainty about how health reform will roll out in 2014, and who will opt into the new (and improved?) system, health cost growth will slow to 6.5% signalling a trend of moderating medical costs in America. Read More »

As Hospital Chains Grow, So Do Their Prices For Care

Chad Terhune | California Healthline | June 13, 2016

As health care consolidation accelerates nationwide, a new study shows that hospital prices in two of California’s largest health systems were 25 percent higher than at other hospitals around the state. Researchers said this gap of nearly $4,000 per patient admission was not due to regional wage differences or hospitals treating sicker patients. Rather, they said California’s two biggest hospital chains, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, had used their market power to win higher rates...

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As Hospital Prices Soar, A Stitch Tops $500

Elisabeth Rosenthal | New York Times | December 2, 2013

With blood oozing from deep lacerations, the two patients arrived at California Pacific Medical Center’s tidy emergency room. Deepika Singh, 26, had gashed her knee at a backyard barbecue. Orla Roche, a rambunctious toddler on vacation with her family, had tumbled from a couch, splitting open her forehead on a table... Read More »

As HP Targets the Cloud, Open Source Players Could Be Acquisition Targets

Sam Dean | O Static | March 15, 2011

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has a relatively new CEO, Leo Apotheker, who laid out HP's corporate strategy this week, and made clear that the company won't rely on legacy software and strategies going forward. Instead, HP is staking its future on cloud computing. At HP's summit for analysts and journalists, Apotheker made clear that he will focus the company on the cloud and on analytics, which adds fuel to recent conjencture that HP may also have increasing relationships with players focused on open source in the cloud, possibly including acquisitions of open source cloud players.

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As If the Killer Got Away

Deborah J. Nelson, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Ryan McNeill | Reuters | September 7, 2016

In a more than yearlong investigation, Reuters used court records, news reports, patient advocacy organizations and Web searches to identify individuals who had died of antibiotic-resistant infections and then contacted relatives to obtain death certificates and medical records. In some cases, the death certificate did not mention the lethal infection. In many others, it did, but the death occurred in a state that doesn’t track the infections. Even in states that do track some superbug deaths, none are counted nationally, in real time, in any unified surveillance system...

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As iPhone 5C Fades, Firefox OS And Android Square Off In Emerging Markets

Matt Asay | ReadWrite | October 15, 2013

Emerging markets are poised to make a big impact on mobile computing, and this is where Firefox OS has a real chance against Android. Read More »

As Once-Mighty Symbian Enters Hospice, Will It Be Missed?

Matt Hamblen | Computerworld | June 14, 2013

Nokia refuses to say when Symbian shipments will finally end, but concedes latest woes can be traced to software's complexity Read More »

As Predicted, Elsevier's Attempt To Silence Sci-Hub Has Increased Public Awareness Massively

Glynn Moody | TechDirt | March 18, 2016

Last month, Techdirt wrote about the growing interest in Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers -- more than 47,000,000 of them at the time of writing. As Mike noted then, Elsevier's attempt to make the site go away by suing it has inevitably produced a classic Streisand Effect, whereby many more people know about it as a direct result. That was first pointed out by Mike Taylor in a short post, where he listed a few titles that had written about Sci-Hub. This week, David Rosenthal has produced a kind of update, listing many more posts on the subject that have appeared in the last month alone.

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As VA Backlog Grows, Congress, Veterans Grow Weary Of Excuses

Bill Briggs | NBC | February 27, 2013

With most veterans waiting nine months for the Department of Veterans Affairs to process disability claims, a congressional panel Wednesday chastised the VA and the Department of Defense for each breaking four years of vows to merge all troops’ medical records into a single electronic system to help crack that backlog. Read More »

ASAP Awards – Interview With Daniel Mietchen

Fabiana Kubke | PLOS.org | October 1, 2013

The names of the six finalists for the ASAP awards are now out, and I was pleased to see Daniel Mietchen’s name in the list. Daniel Mietchen, Raphael Wimmer and Nils Dagsson Moskopp have been working on a really valuable project. There was an opportunity in exploiting open access literature to illustrate articles in Wikipedia. Read More »

ASAP Awards – Interview With Mat Todd

Fabiana Kubke | PLOS.org | October 1, 2013

The name of the six finalists for the ASAP awards are out. Backed by major sponsors like Google, PLOS and the Wellcome Trust, and a number of other organisations, this award seeks to “build awareness and encourage the use of scientific research — published through Open Access — in transformative ways.” Read More »

ASAP Awards – Interview With Nitika Pant Tai

Fabiana Kubke | PLOS.org | October 21, 2013

Communities with limited wealth suffer of diseases in a way that many of us may never come to be confronted with. Poverty befriends disease, and many diseases befriend shame. Read More »

ASAP Awards – Winners Announced

Fabiana Kubke | PLOS.org | October 21, 2013

Earlier this month the six finalists for the ASAP awards were named. They represented six outstanding contributions to innovation that exploited Open Access. The 3 winners were announced at a kickoff event at the World Bank in Washington DC, on the Monday of Open Access Week 2013. [...] Read More »

Asia Foundation At Google’s Big Tent On Open Data, Disasters

Michelle Chang Rodriguez | The Asia Foundation | June 27, 2013

On July 2 in Sendai, Japan, nearly a year and a half after the tragic earthquake and tsunami devastated the region, The Asia Foundation will participate in a Google conference to examine using open data in disaster relief. [...] Read More »