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3 Global Health IT Takeaways You Need to Know - Reflections from ONC 3rd Interoperability Forum

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) engages in several global health IT projects from a United States government perspective. ONC works with global counterparts to share experiences, and ensure alignment between global interoperability efforts and the United States' approaches to interoperability. This includes working through worldwide partnerships, bi-lateral and multi-lateral engagements, global networks, and memoranda of understanding. Through these engagements, we focus on advancing common health data standards for global interoperability, enhancing individuals' access to their data, progressing healthcare providers' experiences, and improving factors associated with transparency and competition.

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5 Ways Humanitarian Bots Can Save the World

Mariya Yao | TOPBOTS | November 6, 2016

Fifteen year old Sarafina, a female student in the capital city of Liberia, had a distressing problem at school: Her math teacher refused to give her a report card unless she had sex with him. Every day at school, he would request sexual favors and touch her inappropriately. Embarrassed, Sarafina kept the issue hidden from everyone, even her parents, until her father overheard a sexually harassing phone call the teacher made to their home. Sarafina’s father successfully confronted the man and got the report card, but his daughter was reprimanded for reporting her teacher’s sexual advances and forced to move to another school...

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600-bed NHS Hospital in England Goes Live with Open Source Electronic Record for Patients

Press Release | IMS MAXIMS | October 7, 2015

Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has become the first NHS hospital in the UK to go live with an open source electronic patient record (EPR), a landmark move expected to help staff deliver better patient care through improved access to information.The trust has successfully rolled out the system in A&E, theatres, outpatients and the hospital’s 30 wards with the support of IMS MAXIMS, after the software firm released the code for its open source EPR technology to the NHS just over a year ago. Up until now NHS trusts have depended on proprietary software in order to record and manage patient information.

A Call To Policy Makers: Open Source Is Where Innovation Is Happening

The impact of technology on society and the economy continues to excite and challenge all of us. Policy makers are no exception. Their objective—writ large—is to put in place policies that encourage the development and deployment of beneficial technologies in order to drive growth, prosperity, and the general welfare of their citizens. Where should policy makers focus? The best place is where the future is happening. In other words, the best place is where innovation is happening...

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A paperless NHS? Swapping best practice and ideas with the US Veteran Health Administration to make it happen

Press Release | 2020health, 3Millionlives | March 13, 2013

If the NHS is serious about going digital it should continue to build on an existing partnership with the VHA and continue to revolutionise healthcare, says the report "Making connections - A transatlantic exchange to support the adoption of digital health between the US VHA and England’s NHS" developed jointly by the VHA, 3Millionlives and published by 2020health. Read More »

A Pilot Site for NHS VistA in the UK

Ewan Davis | Woodcote Consulting | July 14, 2013

Moving the open source agenda require that NHS Trust submit Expressions of Interests (EoI) for open source projects under NHS England’s £260 million Technology Fund  by the deadline on 31th July. Over recent weeks I’ve been persuaded that there would be real value for the patients, the NHS and the UK health informatics industry in the creation of a UK version of an open-source EHR, and VistA would be a good place to start. Read More »

A Snapshot of ONC's Global Health IT Efforts

On today's World Health Day, I'd like to give you an inside look at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's (ONC) global health IT work. Advancing digital health (or e-health) is gaining worldwide momentum as nations seek to leverage health IT. While each country and jurisdiction has a different approach to healthcare, global digital health advancements are becoming a common thread across the world. In December 2010, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the European Union (EU) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to galvanize cooperation on advancing digital health in both regions. The MOU focuses on three areas: interoperability, workforce, and innovation.

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An Antibiotic-Resistant Superbug Is Silently Spreading through UK Hospitals

Madlen Davies | New Statesman | March 21, 2017

Lying in a hospital bed, four months pregnant, Emily Morris felt only terror. She had caught a urinary tract infection and it was resistant to common antibiotics. Doctors needed to treat it as it could harm the baby, but the only drugs that could work hadn’t been tested on pregnant women before; the risks were unknown. Overwhelmed, Emily and her husband were asked to make a decision. A few hours later, gripping each other’s arms, they decided she should be given the drugs...

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Antibiotic Resistance Rise Continues

James Gallagher | BBC News | October 9, 2014

Antibiotic prescriptions and cases of resistant bacteria in England have continued to soar despite dire warnings and campaigns, figures show...

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Australian Chief Scientist: Act Now, or Expect Deadly 'Post-Antibiotics Era'

Liat Clark | Wired | July 12, 2013

In the latest warning that antibiotics resistance is nearing dangerous levels in modern populations, Australia's chief scientist has issued a stark warning that if we don't invest in combatting it now, sore throats and other minor infections could one day be deadly. Read More »

Bacteria That Resist 'Last Antibiotic' Found in UK

James Gallagher | BBC News | December 21, 2015

Bacteria that resist the most common antibiotic of last resort - colistin - have been discovered in the UK. Officials say the threat to human health is low, but is under ongoing review. Scientists warned the world was on the cusp of a post-antibiotic era when such resistance was discovered in China last month. Now checks have discovered the same resistance on three farms and in samples of human infections...

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Big Data And Open Data: What's What And Why Does It Matter?

Joel Gurin | The Guardian | April 15, 2014

Big data and the new phenomenon open data are closely related but they're not the same. Open data brings a perspective that can make big data more useful, more democratic, and less threatening. 

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Big data in healthcare: how comfortable are you in your role as 'research patient'?

Anja Kueppers & Kyle McKinnon | Deutsche Welle | November 6, 2013

The UK's National Health Service [NHS] is turning to IT in a big way, with plans to be completely paperless by 2018. More significantly, it wants to make much of that massive data supply transparent.

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Bio-Linux: A Stable, Portable Scientific Research Linux Distribution

Bio-Linux was introduced and detailed in a Nature Biotechnology paper in July 2006. The distribution was a group effort by the Natural Environment Research Council in the UK. As the creators and authors point out, the analysis demands of high-throughput "-omic" (genomic, proteomic, metabolomic) science has necessitated the development of integrated computing solutions to analyze the resultant mountains of experimental data. From this need, Bio-Linux was born. The distribution, according to its creators, serves as a "free bioinformatics workstation platform that can be installed on anything from a laptop to a large server." The current distro version, Bio-Linux 8, is built on an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base. Thus, the general look and feel of Bio-Linux is similar to that of Ubuntu.

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British Government Offers School Pupil Data To Private Companies

Olivia Solon | Wired UK | April 25, 2014

Data relating to every school pupil in England is now available for use by private companies thanks to a change in legislation implemented last year.  The move is part of a wider government initiative to "marketise" data, which includes initiatives such as the much-criticised Care.data and the selling off of taxpayer data by HMRC.

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