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 -

Can Citizen Journalism Move Beyond Crisis Reporting?

Trevor Knoblich | PBS.org | June 9, 2013

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated yet another significant marker for citizen journalism. [...] The crisis again demonstrated the value — and risks — of citizen reporting via social media. Read More »

Can Computers Predict Medical Problems? VA Thinks Maybe.

Bob Brewin | Nextgov | January 30, 2013

The Veterans Health Administration plans to test how advanced clinical reasoning and prediction systems can use massive amounts of archived patient data to help improve care, efficiency and health outcomes. Read More »

Can Firefox OS Challenge iOS, Android?

Mark Walsh | MediaPost News | July 8, 2013

With Mozilla last week launching the first Firefox-powered smartphones, a new report looks at how the new Firefox OS will fare in a market dominated by iOS and Android. How can it hope to compete with the two operating systems running on 70% of the world’s smartphones at the end of last year? Read More »

Can Fracking Cause Bigger, More Frequent Earthquakes?

Dougal Jerram | Ars Technica | July 16, 2013

Injecting fluids into the Earth, whether to recover natural gas or to obtain thermal energy from the planet, can cause earthquakes. New reports that look at American fracking, deep waste-water injection, and geothermal activities suggest there are big risks and thus a need to develop strong regulatory framework to deal with them. Read More »

Can GAVI’s New Partnership Model Crack ‘mhealth Pilotitis’ While Opening New Markets For Vodafone?

Stephanie Hanson | devex.com | August 21, 2013

In the 13 years since it was founded to jumpstart stagnating global vaccination rates, the GAVI Alliance has achieved some remarkable results. Read More »

Can IBM Really Make a Business Out of Blockchain?

Jeff John Roberts | Fortune | June 28, 2016

You can mark 2016 as the year “blockchain” became a buzzword. It’s not as hollow as “cloud,” which marketers have rendered almost meaningless. But “blockchain” is now at the point where everyone and their dogs want a piece of it. One of the loudest evangelists is IBM, which has been touting the potential of blockchain—a technology that can allow companies to create quick, tamper-proof ledgers—to transform everything from finance to trading to insurance...

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Can IT Cure Healthcare's Inertia?

Paul Cerrato | InformationWeek | September 18, 2012

Perhaps you've seen the TV commercial for a popular arthritis drug that says, "A body at rest tends to stay at rest, while a body in motion tends to stay in motion." The ad refers, of course, to a law of physics called inertia--which brings to mind the U.S. healthcare system... Read More »

Can Open Data Improve GPs' Take-up Of Innovations? [UK]

Kathleen Stokes | Healthcare Professionals Network | January 29, 2014

When we think about innovation, we tend to focus on creating and developing new ideas, tools and ways of doing things. While valuable, this alone it is not enough. To have impact, promising and proven innovations need to be explored and implemented. 

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Can Open Innovation Speed Up Drug Development?

Paul A. | IdeaConnection | July 26, 2012

Transparency Life Sciences claims to be the world’s first drug development company based on open innovation. Officially launched in January 2012 it provides a platform for patients, doctors, researchers and various other stakeholders to contribute to the design of clinical studies. Read More »

Can Open Middleware Revolutionize Education?

Aseem Sharma | OpenSource.com | January 21, 2014

"It is a miracle that curiosity escapes formal education." These words by Albert Einstein reflect a lot about the current state of education. It also captures the need for overhauling the fabric of our school system. [...] I talked to Vincent Mayers, open source community manager at inBloom, to learn how the company is changing school systems and how open source technologies aid in its mission. Read More »

Can Open Source EHRs Offer a New Path for Health IT Usability?

Jennifer Bresnick | Health IT Analytics | March 28, 2017

In an article published in JMIR Medical Informatics, researchers from the University of California-Davis decided to explore the small but intriguing world of open source EHRs, which may fit very neatly into the growing interest in application programming interfaces, FHIR, and other open data standards that encourage customized mix-and-match health IT development without the historical pitfalls of proprietary systems. Using data from 2014, the researchers identified 54 open source projects that met the HHS definition of an electronic health record.  At the time, four of those packages had achieved Certified EHR Technology status from the ONC.

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Can Open Source Hardware Movement Be Used To Realize Low Cost Educational Robots?

SK Gupta | Pursuit of Unorthodox Ideas | April 5, 2013

Robots are expensive! A simple robot arm costs more than ten thousand dollars. On the other hand, a state-of-the-art dish washer costs less than a thousand dollars. These two are not significantly different in terms of size or complexity, so what is the reason for such a large difference in their prices? Read More »

Can Public And Private HIEs Get Along?

Diana Manos | Government Health IT | November 16, 2012

Public health information exchanges (HIEs) have expressed concerns about compatibility and sustainability as the number of private HIEs continues to rise, according to eHealth Initiative's 12th Annual HIE Survey. Read More »

Can Service Save Us?

Joe Klein | Time | June 20, 2013

There was absolutely no way Ian Smith was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. He was sure of it. He was O.K. [...] Yes, he’d seen some terrible stuff during two tours in Iraq. But others had been through much worse. He’d never been wounded. He was alive. Read More »

Can Slow-Moving Universities Adapt Quickly Enough To Teach In The Digital Age?

Gary Kebbel | PBS.org | August 28, 2013

The start of classes this fall will also bring renewed debate about what journalism and mass communications colleges should teach in an age of disruption. Professors are trying to figure out how we should be preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet. Or for jobs that will exist in two years, but won’t in four. Read More »