News Clips

Physician Panel Prescribes the Fees Paid by Medicare

Anna Wilde Matthews and Tom McGinty | Wall Street Journal | October 26, 2010

Three times a year, 29 doctors gather around a table in a hotel meeting room. Their job is an unusual one: divvying up billions of Medicare dollars.

The group, convened by the American Medical Association, has no official government standing. Members are mostly selected by medical-specialty trade groups. Anyone who attends its meetings must sign a confidentiality agreement. Read More »

New Capabilities Added to OpenClinica Version 3.1

Paul Galvin | OpenClinica Blog | October 26, 2010

For the past 12 months, the OpenClinica development team has been working diligently on the next major OpenClinica release. In a prior blog post (OpenClinica 3.1 (project “Amethyst”) Preview), I discussed some of the new functionality and key improvements this forthcoming release will include.

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Park: Agency Data Should Be Released More Quickly, as 'Beta'

Molly Bernhart Walker | Fierce Government IT | October 25, 2010

According to panelists speaking at the ACT-IAC Executive Leadership Conference on Oct. 25, collaboration shouldn't just be around the mashups, but around the data set itself.

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Report: Open-Source Software Development Could Benefit VA

None | iHealthBeat | October 25, 2010

The Department of Veterans Affairs and numerous other organizations could benefit from a program to facilitate open-source software development for VA's VistA electronic health record system, according to a report by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Modern Healthcare reports.

DOD, VA Consider More Integration for EHR systems, VA Official Says

Alice Lipowicz | Federal Computer Week | October 24, 2010

The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments are considering creating a joint electronic health record (EHR) system as one of many options, a top VA official said today.

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O'Reilly Open Source Convention: Report on the Health Care Track

Paul Tarini | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | October 23, 2010

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) introduced a health care track for the first time in 2010. The track was inspired by O’Reilly Media’s growing interest in the innovations coming out of the intersection of healthcare and technology, was constructed using research and connections to health care innovators built by Tim O’Reilly and other O’Reilly staff, and was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

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Healthcare IT Isn't Living Up to the Hype

Mary K. Pratt | ComputerWorld | October 22, 2010

Computerization is slowly improving the healthcare system, but it's a long way from living up to expectations.

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Comments on Vista Software Ecosystem Report by Herbsleb, Müller-Birn, and Towne

Thomas Munneke | Thomas Munneke's Eclectica | October 21, 2010

I was pleased to get a very thorough and thoughtful software engineering assessment of the VistA system by James D. Herbsleb,   Claudia Müller-Birn, and  W. Ben Towne of the Institute for Software Research School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University.

It is encouraging to see such a thorough study of the issues relating to the future of VistA.  Here is the original report. and here are my comments interspersed in it.  This comes on the heels of the Industry Advisory Council Vista Report advocating an open source future for VistA.

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Open Source Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing

Malcolm Newbrie | IHE UK | October 20, 2010

Well if you believe that IHE's cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) open standard is the bees knees, just imagine an open source XDS solution!...This is the future of healthcare - standardised and commoditised infrastructure, which everyone can exploit to build new innovative applications. Read More »

Blumenthal: Minorities Lack Physicians Utilizing EHRs

David Perera | Fierce Government IT | October 20, 2010

Health information technology czar David Blumenthal is calling on vendors to increase electronic health record adoption among physicians serving underserved minority populations. Read More »

DH Kicks Off Open Source Steering Group

Malcolm Newbrie | IHE UK | October 19, 2010

Last Tuesday saw a quiet but extremely important event take place in Vantage House Leeds - the creation of an initial steering group for UK healthcare open source software adoption and development. Read More »

The Open Source "Community" Requires a Return to Nurturing Inclusion and Encouragement

Graham Morrison | TechRadar.com | October 19, 2010

"Community" is a term that implies a shared goal and some kind of kinship, when there is none. It's a term that implies cooperation and cohesion, when there's just too much conflict and disagreement for this to happen

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Microscopy Image Analysis Tutorial

Luis Ibanez | Kitware Blog | October 18, 2010

At the MICCAI 2010 conference in Beijing, China, a Tutorial on Microscopy Image Analysis was presented. Read More »

VA, Indian Health Service Outline New Plan for Improving Care With IT

Molly Merrill | HealthcareIT News | October 16, 2010

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to improve the health status of American Indian and Alaska Native veterans, officials announced Tuesday. The MOU includes improving care though the development of health information technology. Read More »

Kitware Supports MICCAI 2010

Stephen Aylward | Kitware Blog | October 15, 2010

Kitware was omnipresent at the 2010 Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) conference held in Beijing China, September 20-24. This blog highlights some of our involvement in that event: Read More »