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 -

Why US Government IT Fails So Hard, So Often

Sean Gallagher | Ars Technica | October 10, 2013

The rocky launch of the Department of Health and Human Services' HealthCare.gov is the most visible evidence at the moment of how hard it is for the federal government to execute major technology projects. But the troubled "Obamacare" IT system—which uses systems that aren't connected in any way to the federal IT infrastructure—is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the government's IT problems. Read More »

Why US Power Companies Don’t Want You Putting A Solar Panel On Your Roof

Tim Fernholz | Quartz | August 15, 2013

The short answer: It will destroy their business model forever. Read More »

Why Ushahidi Should Embrace Open Data

Patrick Meier | iRevolution | February 3, 2013

“This is the report that Ushahidi did not want you to see.” Or so the rumors in certain circles would have it. Some go as far as suggesting that Ushahidi tried to burry or delay the publication. On the other hand, some rumors claim that the report was a conspiracy to malign and discredit Ushahidi... Read More »

Why VA Health Care Is Different

David J. Shulkin | Federal Practitioner | May 1, 2016

Is VA health care really “all that different” from what veterans would find in the private sector? As someone who spent more than 25 years managing private sector health care organizations and recently joined VA as its under secretary for health, I’ve had the unique opportunity to compare the health care systems. Over the past several months, I’ve met with veterans and their families, veterans service organizations, VA clinicians, facility staff, and veteran employees at all levels...

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Why We Have An Open Wireless Movement

Adi Kamdar | Electronic Frontier Foundation | October 30, 2012

EFF believes open networks are crucial in hurricane-affected areas
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Why We Need More Open Source Medicines

Tracy Kolenchuk | Wake Up World | September 24, 2012

Two thousand five hundred years ago, Hippocrates said “Let food by thy medicine, and let medicine be your food.” The concept of “open source” had not been invented, but Hippocrates was talking about “open source medicines”. Read More »

Why We Need To Keep Our Community Hospitals Strong

Chuck Lauer | Becker's Hospital Review | May 29, 2012

Community hospitals are under siege right now. Unlike large medical centers or hospital systems, they do not have the clout to qualify for the highest payor rates or the lowest vendor prices. And these self-standing, non-profit institutions have limited access to financing at a time when we're stuck in economic doldrums. Read More »

Why We Need To Treat America's Poorest Neighborhoods Like Developing Countries

Emily Badger | The Atlantic Cities | July 15, 2013

The average life expectancy in Japan right now, home to one of the healthiest, longest-living populations in the world, is about 83 years. That's four years longer than in the United States, a decade longer than in much of North Africa, and as many as 30 years longer than some war-torn parts of the world like Sierra Leone. Read More »

Why We Open-Sourced Our Uptime Monitoring System

Beyang Liu | Plain Text -- The Official Sourcegraph Blog | September 7, 2016

About a month ago, Sourcegraph released Checkup, an open-source, self-hosted uptime monitoring system written by Matt Holt. Following its release, a lot of people asked us how we were using Checkup at Sourcegraph. Today, we’re sharing our public status page, powered by Checkup, and laying out some of the big advantages we’ve found using an open-source health check tool...

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Why We Should All Worry About Being Tracked Online

James Ball | The Guardian | February 11, 2013

'Riot' software developed to monitor people on social networks is as sinister as it sounds. We need legal safeguards, and fast Read More »

Why We Should Build A National Internet System Under The National Highway System

Eric Jaffe | The Atlantic Cities | August 21, 2013

Earlier this month, The Daily Yonder, a well-named site about life in rural America, brought us this unsettling map of broadband availability, or lack thereof, in the country's remote counties: Read More »

Why We Should Care About What The NSA May Or May Not Be Doing

Jenn Webb | O'Reilly Strata | June 14, 2013

Response to NSA data mining and the troubling lack of technical details, Facebook's Open Compute data center, and local police are growing their own DNA databases. Read More »

Why We Shouldn’t Call Apple ResearchKit and CareKit ‘Platforms’

Ryan Rossier | HIT Consultant | October 17, 2016

It’s no secret that getting people to engage in their health is one of our generation’s biggest challenges. Digital health engagement, especially, is often discussed as “a huge opportunity,” but the reality is that while people are interested in their health, it’s still incredibly difficult to get them to use digital tools consistently. Enacting behavior change is still a mostly elusive process...

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Why We're Releasing Our Design Data To The Open-Source Community

Shamal Faily | Webinos | September 4, 2012

There is an on-going debate about whether open-source software is more secure than closed-software, or vice-versa. Read More »

Why We're Still Waiting On The 'Yelpification' Of Health Care

Lindsay Abrams | Atlantic | October 18, 2012

Reviewing doctors -- what seems like a simple, effective way to empower and inform patients -- isn't so straightforward. Read More »