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The Next Open Source Frontier Is the Farm
By scaling precision agriculture technologies to smaller sustainable agriculture systems, it should be possible to make many more crops and growing systems economically feasible without compromising environmental health and sustainabilty. This could mean more locally grown, organic food grown profitably in more communities and accessible to more people at lower cost—a huge win for small farmers. And it could mean that change is possible in large-scale farm management practices as well... Read More »
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US Hospitals Facing Financial Squeeze-Mass Closures
In the last year, the profitability of U.S. hospitals eroded for the first time since the Great Recession, pushing some closer to and others over the solvency precipice. Revenues are down and costs are up. And these issues appear systemic and entrenched, giving rise to a series of important and relevant questions: How can hospitals adapt? If they do, will they still survive? And, do we as a nation think it’s important to make hospitals accessible, even if they lose money? Read More »
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 »
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Why use EWD.js with VistA rather than a standard Node.js framework?
Why indeed should the VistA development community use EWD.js instead of one of the more well-known frameworks, and why use the InterSystems interface instead of a simple TCP-based connection and a Mumps-based socket-server? Read More »
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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 »
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Interview with Simon Phipps-Patent Trolls and Open Document Format
Gordon Haff interview with OSI's Simon Phipps conducted on July 31st. Phipps talks recent US software patent case decisions and why they're so significant as well as the recent UK government decision about open document formats. Who are the winners and the losers? Read More »
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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 »
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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 »
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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 »
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