The Atlantic

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As Vermont Goes Single Payer, So Goes The Nation?

Molly Worthen | SundayReview | April 5, 2014

Three years ago, Peter Shumlin, the governor of Vermont, signed a bill creating Green Mountain Care: a single-payer system in which, if all goes according to plan, the state will regulate doctors’ fees and cover Vermonters’ medical bills.

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Big Brother Would Like To Warn You About Big Brother, Inc.

Philip Bump | The Wire | May 2, 2014

...The new report, titled "Big Data: Seizing opportunities, preserving values," tries to flesh out what those private-sector ramifications might be...The report is the White House "hoping to move the national debate over privacy beyond the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities to the practices of companies like Google and Facebook," as the paper puts it...

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Open Source in the Worldwide COVID-19 Response

February marks the celebration of creation of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998. OSI created the standard definition of the term Open Source that helped guide many of LPI's initiatives today. Through the past year, open source provided many opportunities to organizations to continue to work, implement their projects, and continue reaching out to communities. Here are just a few examples of how open source provides opportunities through the face of COVID-19. The COVID-19 crisis brought out all the creativity of the open source movement. In every area of innovation--open source software, open data, open collaboration, and even open equipment--companies and research institutes have addressed medical and public health needs quickly. This article highlights some of the initiatives in each area.

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Revisualizing and Recoding Health Care

Two new books have me thinking about healthcare, although neither is about healthcare and, I must admit, neither of which I’ve yet read. But both appear to be full of ideas that strike me as directly relevant to the mess we call our healthcare system. The books are Atlas of the Senseable City, by Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti, and Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, by Jennifer Pahlka. Dr. Picon is a professor at The Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Professor Ratti is head of MIT’s Senseable Lab. Drawing on the Lab’s work, they write: “We hope to reveal here an urban landscape of not just spaces and objects, but also motion, connection, circulation, and experience.” I.e. dynamic maps. Traffic, weather, people’s moment-by-moment decisions all change how a city moves and works in real time.

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The Tragedy Of Electronic Medical Records

J.K. Wall | IBJ.com | October 23, 2014

...Digitizing medical records was supposed to transform health care—improving the quality of care and the service provided to patients while helping cut out unnecessary costs...But lately, electronic medical record systems are getting nothing but votes of no-confidence from physicians, hospitals, insurers and IT experts...

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