Feature Articles

Global Bio-Disaster Response Urgently Needed In Ebola Fight

World leaders are failing to address the worst ever Ebola epidemic, and states with biological-disaster response capacity, including civilian and military medical capability, must immediately dispatch assets and personnel to West Africa, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today in a special briefing at the United Nations organized by the office of the UN Secretary General and the World Health Organisation (WHO). Read More »

New CMS Rule Allows Flexibility in Certified EHR Technology for 2014

This afternoon, CMS published he long awaited final rule on Meaningful Use flexibility. Here’s my interpretation. Read More »

Access to Open Data ‘Key to Sustainable Development’

Open access to scientific and technological data could help Africa achieve sustainable development goals, a meeting has heard. According to information and communication technology (ICT) experts who attended the International Workshop on Open Data for Science and Sustainability in Developing Countries in Nairobi, Kenya, early this month (6-8 August), open access will enable researchers, policymakers, technology developers and the public access information and share knowledge for informed decisions. Read More »

Does Open Source Boost Mental Health?

Open source is as much a philosophy of living as it is a method of creating software. Part of this philosophy is that everything designed by the human mind is improvable. This is a hopeful philosophy and in some cases an intoxicatingly hopeful philosophy. Open source practitioners spend no time worrying about what cannot be done. All of their mental energies attune to what can be done. If you love open source, you live in a constant state of wondering. You delight in the fact that you need not worry about the barriers between what you hope can be built and what can actually be built. Read More »

Rapid Humanitarian Research Fund Kicks In For Ebola

An emergency call for research projects on Ebola that will tap into a humanitarian crisis fund is being launched today by UK-based medical research charity the Wellcome Trust and the Department for International Development. The call aims to better inform the fight against current and future Ebola outbreaks and is open to researchers worldwide in fields including anthropology, clinical management, diagnosis, disease control and prevention, ethics, health systems, social mobilisation, surveillance and treatment. Read More »

Notes on the August Meeting of the HIT Standards Committee

The August HIT Standards Committee meeting focused on the work ahead to accelerate interoperability.   It’s no longer about Meaningful Use, it’s about Meaningful healthcare information exchange. I offered my opinion about the work ahead.  ONC is in the middle of regulation writing for Meaningful Use Stage 3, so the standards work of the next 10 weeks is not going to be incorporated into the NPRM. Read More »

U.S. Digital Services and Playbook: "Default to Open"

About this time last year, I laid out some trends I saw for the coming year in government take up of open source software. Looking back now, it appears those trends are not only here to stay, they are accelerating and are more important than ever. In particular, I wrote that "open source will continue to be the 'go to' approach for governments around the world" and that "increasingly, governments are wrestling with the 'how tos' of open source choices; not whether to use it."... Read More »

Open Health Community Management At Clinovo Using Drupal

Olivier Roth, Community Manager at Clinovo, has grown an open source community around the open health platform ClinCapture, an open source Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system. Opensource.com caught up with Olivier, who was tasked with not only marketing an open source product but building genuine and natural interest around it to help move it forward. In this interview, we explore the importance of a community to an open source project with tips for how to create and maintain one. Read More »

The Drupal API turns a CMS into a True Health Care Enterprise Application

At the company where I work, Achieve Internet, we view Drupal as more than just a CMS — we see it as a powerful web application platform with capabilities to integrate multiple sources of information. Sporting a far-reaching and flexible API, Drupal can link together other platforms that provide APIs, such as enterprise productivity systems or electronic health records (EHRs), and essentially provide Drupal’s web pages as an interface to these systems on both a read and write basis. The growth of the platform and the community has put Drupal in a position to revolutionize the concept of a traditional CMS in one market sector after another, from the media and entertainment industries to education, travel, and government.
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Open Source Forms the Backbone of the Most Significant Projects

Organizations large and small are changing their approach to open source software (OSS). Increasingly, OSS is being viewed as more than just a development tool, but as a strategic asset. And the implications of this change are becoming clear... Read More »

The Meaningful Use Stage 2 Finish Line

Hospitals across the country have until September 30 to complete their 2014 reporting period for Meaningful Use Stage 2. Recently Ashish Jha and Julia Adler-Milstein published important articles in Health Affairs about the current state of EHRs  and Health Information Exchange .  What can we learn about the status of Meaningful Use Stage 2 across the country? Read More »

Open Source Motion Controller Revolutionizes Human-Computer Interactions

The Leap Motion Controller is a step towards breaking down this barrier with motion control, using the original human interface: the hand. It’s a small USB peripheral that tracks your hands within an interaction zone of eight cubic feet. While the hardware is fairly simple—featuring three infrared lights and a pair of cameras—the software makes possible high-precision tracking with near-zero latency... Read More »

US Digital Service is Born

Yesterday, the White House announced the formation of the US Digital Service, a cadre of technology sherpas meant to inject more modern commercial practices into government IT, especially the development of websites and mobile applications. It’s obviously inspired by the Government Digital Service, a similar effort in the UK, and the early success of the GSA’s 18F team. Read More »

We Cannot Do Modern Science Unless It's Open

Open is about sharing and collaboration. It's the idea that "we" is more powerful, more rewarding and fulfilling than "I". I can't promise jobs, but I do know that open is becoming very big. Governments and funders are pushing the open agenda, even though academics are generally uninterested or seriously self-interested... Read More »

Delivering a Customer-Focused Government Through Smarter IT

A core part of the President’s Management Agenda is improving the value we deliver to citizens through Federal IT. That’s why, today, the Administration is formally launching the U.S. Digital Service. The Digital Service will be a small team made up of our country’s brightest digital talent that will work with agencies to remove barriers to exceptional service delivery and help remake the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government. Read More »