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 -

Calling Obesity A Disease: Is This About Health Or Is It About Money?

William Anderson | Huffington Post | July 9, 2013

In case you've been on vacation the last month and incommunicado, the New York Times on June 18 reported that the AMA has officially declared that obesity is a disease, not just a physical condition. Since then, the media, the Internet and the medical community have erupted in a frenzy of stories and opinions. Read More »

Calling On Congress: Time To Fix Copyright

Parker Higgins | Electronic Frontier Foundation | December 12, 2012

[Over] and over, Congress has failed to engage in an informed discussion over which copyright policies advance the public interest, and which ones cause harm. That's why we're supporting our friends at Fight for the Future in their launch of a campaign to urge Congress to engage in a reality-based debate about our copyright policy. Read More »

Caltech Adopts Open Access Policy For Scholarly Writing

Dian Schaffhauser | Campus Technology | January 6, 2014

With the beginning of the new year, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has implemented a new open-access policy for the scholarly writing done by its faculty. As decided by the faculty, starting on January 1, 2014, all members must agree to grant nonexclusive rights to Caltech to disseminate their scholarly papers. [...] Read More »

Cameras As Evidence: What Does It Mean For Ushahidians?

Heather Leson | Ushahidi | July 12, 2013

Deep in the mountains of Italy, Centro d’Ompio, we sat in a circle brainstorming Cameras as Evidence. What would it take to collect a good and actionable citizen report using photos or video? Lead by Chris Michael of Witness, we discussed and brainstormed. [...] Read More »

Campaign To End NSA Warrantless Surveillance Surges Past 500,000 Signers

Rainey Reitman | Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) | June 27, 2013

Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, Joins Half Million Users in Opposing NSA Dragnet Surveillance Read More »

Campaign To Reinforce Southern Voice In Research

T.V. Padma | SciDev.Net | August 28, 2012

An initiative has been launched to break the dominance of Northern agendas and practices in development debates and policy, and to increase the impact of Southern research on global development discussions. Read More »

Can a 3D Printing Network for VA Hospitals Realize Ambitions for Customized Prosthetics?

Stephanie Baum | MedCity News | March 20, 2017

Stratasys has established a 3D printing lab network as part of an agreement with Center for Innovation at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The move signals the medtech company’s ambitions to move customized prosthetics into the mainstream of healthcare. The agreement with the Center for Innovation at the Department of Veterans Affairs will make five hospitals part of the initial network in Puget Sound, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Orlando, and Boston...

Read More »

Can a Hollywood Techie Grow Government's Innovation Shop?

Adam Mazmanian | FCW | December 2, 2016

By his own admission, Rob Cook was "failing at semi-retirement" when he was offered the top job at the Technology Transformation Service, the government innovation shop based at the General Services Administration that includes 18F. Cook, 63, left his California home behind – as well as the Oscar statuette he keeps dressed in GI Joe clothes – and moved to a rented apartment in Washington, D.C., for a three-year term appointment in the Senior Executive Service as TTS commissioner...

Read More »

Can A Mobile App Boost The Signal About Rare And Neglected Diseases?

Alex Clark | Pistoia Alliance | September 12, 2012

One of the great things about mobile apps is that they are low-profile, easy-to-adopt tools that theoretically could remove traditional barriers between information sources...Nowhere is this more evident, or more important, than in the area of rare and neglected disease research, where disparate (and often desperate) information seekers need better ways to access and share information. Read More »

Can A Phoenix Arise From The Ashes Of Mumps?

Rob Tweed | The EWD Files | January 22, 2013

There’s a major problem that is growing increasingly critical in the Mumps application world: where are the new generation of developers going to come from to support what is a pretty massive legacy of applications? Read More »

Can A Phoenix Arise From The Ashes Of Mumps? (Part 2)

Rob Tweed | The EWD Files | January 23, 2013

My analysis in part 1 of this article suggests that the rest of the IT industry have never recognised anything particularly special or noteworthy about these characteristics which I think is our (the Mumps community’s) fault, not their’s... Read More »

Can A Smart Beehive Network Of Open-Source Hives Help Stop The Bee Apocalypse?

Ben Schiller | Fast Company | November 18, 2013

The Open Source Beehives Project aims to lower the barriers to backyard beekeeping with simple, low-cost hive designs. With bees dying by the millions, they need to spread the buzz. Read More »

Can Africa’s Mobile Phones And Maps Usher In A Governance Revolution?

Michael Keller | Txchologist | December 10, 2013

For crime victims in the Kenyan town of Lamet Umoja, where before there was silence, now there is Twitter. Read More »

Can Any Tablet OS Challenge Android And iOS?

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | ZDNet | July 19, 2013

Windows RT flopped but, seriously, is there any tablet OS that take on Android and iOS? Read More »

Can Citizen Journalism Move Beyond Crisis Reporting In Traditional Newsrooms?

Trevor Knoblich | FrontlineSMS | May 9, 2013

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated yet another significant marker for citizen journalism. Felix Salmon, in an excellent post on the Reuters blog, wrote that the manhunt for a suspect in the bombings “in many ways represented the first fully interactive news story.” The crisis again demonstrated the value — and risks — of citizen reporting via social media. Read More »