Feature Articles
3-D Printing Could Offer Savings On Replica Lab Kit
Working replicas of expensive scientific equipment could be made for a fraction of conventional cost using cheap 3-D printers, possibly saving developing world labs thousands of dollars each time, says a researcher whose book on the subject was published last year. This and similar advances mean the age of appropriate technology — affordable, sustainable solutions designed and built to meet local needs — may be here, argues Joshua Pearce, a materials science and engineering professor at Michigan Technological University, United States, in an article in Physics World magazine.
How Three College Students Built a Health Provider Search Site in Six Weeks - A Lesson for the Federal Government
In six weeks, a team of three college students with no industry experience and only academic software-specific knowledge, developed and designed a health care provider search system using only open source software. To tell you how they got there, let's start with a little history of open source software in the US federal government workspace... Read More »
Halamka Explains Background to athenahealth/BIDMC Collaboration
BIDMC and athenahealth announced a new and unique collaboration. The collaboration between the two organizations provides athenahealth the chance to take BIDMC’s experience to a much larger audience, hopefully making a difference to providers, patients, and payers across the country. athenahealth will also accelerate its ability to develop expanded functionality more rapidly than doing it alone. Read More »
HIMSS14: OSEHRA Organizes Open Source EHR Panel at the HIMSS Conference
OSEHRA has been invited to organize an Open Source EHR session at the 2014 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference and Exhibition on Sunday, February 23 in Orlando, Florida. More than 37,000 healthcare IT professionals, clinicians, executives, and vendors from around the world are expected to participate in the HIMSS conference. We are enthusiastic about engaging this community, especially with our unique session focused on user-driven innovations, interagency collaboration, and future investments. Our session will feature success stories from VistA users including Lutheran Medical Center, the North Carolina Department of Health, Oroville Hospital, and the College of St. Scholastica...
U.S.-U.K. Health IT Collaboration is Official!
OSEHRA...participated in early planning meetings for a bilateral agreement signed on January 23, 2014, by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt. Intended to strengthen the healthcare systems of both countries, the agreement calls for collaboration within health information technology, specifically the sharing of information, tools, and strategies. The agreement outlines specific focal areas: Sharing Quality Indicators, Liberating Data and Putting It to Work, Priming the Health IT Market, and most significantly for OSEHRA-- Adopting Digital Health Record Systems.
Doctors Use Wikipedia to Collaborate in the Production of Quality Medical Information
Six years ago, Doctor James Heilman was working a night shift in the ER when he came across an error-ridden article on Wikipedia. Someone else might have used the article to dismiss the online encyclopedia, which was then less than half the size it is now. Instead, Heilman decided to improve the article. “I noticed an edit button and realized that I could fix it. Sort of got hooked from there. I’m still finding lots of articles that need a great deal of work before they reflect the best available medical evidence.”
Roberts-Hoffman Neuron EHR Achieves ONC Certification
Roberts-Hoffman Software EHR has achieved 2011/2012 COMPLETE Inpatient EHR ONC-ATCB Certification, which designates that the software is capable of supporting providers with Stage 1 meaningful use measures required to qualify for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Neuron Electronic Health Record was certified on May 3, 2012 under ICSA Labs’ ONC-ATCB Electronic Health Record program and is compliant in accordance with the criteria adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Read More »
Top 5 Misconceptions About Open Source In Government Programs
On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates 'preference' for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption... Read More »
Open Chemistry Project Upholds Mission of Unorganization, The Blue Obelisk
Chemistry is not the most open field of scientific endeavor; in fact, as I began working more in the area (coming from a background in physics), I was surprised with the norms in the field. As a PhD student way back in 2003, I simply wanted to draw a 3D molecular structure on my operating system of choice (Linux), and be able to save an image for a paper/poster discussing my research. This proved to be nearly impossible, and in 2005 a group of like-minded researchers got together at a meeting of the American Chemical Society and formed an unorganization: The Blue Obelisk (named after their meeting place in San Diego)...
OpenMRS January 2013 Contributor Of The Month: Saptarshi Purkayastha
Editor’s Note: Starting in 2013, we will be highlighting an OpenMRS contributor every month, giving you the opportunity to learn more about the people building the OpenMRS software and community. More information about the Contributor of the Month program is available on the OpenMRS wiki...Saptarshi Purkayastha is from Mumbai, India and currently lives in Norway for work. He is a Research Fellow at the Department of Computer & Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he is enrolled in the PhD program and works as a researcher in the domain of Health Information Systems for developing countries. His research group is the HISP Project at the University of Oslo, so Saptarshi spends most of his time there. Recently, OpenMRS community manager Michael Downey spoke to Saptarshi about his experiences in the OpenMRS project. Read More »
CPOE: Meaningful Use’s Primary Obstacle Is VistA’s Greatest Strength
A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) identifies the implementation and adoption of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) functionality as the number one barrier for hospitals working toward Meaningful Use Stage 1. Entitled “Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: Insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011,” the study findings are significant because the say a great deal about the way different health IT platforms have been developed.
The Anvil Podcast: OpenMRS
Several weeks ago I went to the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. The OpenMRS project was represented there by a number of the team members, and I was able to have a few informal conversations with them. After I got back home, I conducted an interview with Ben Wolfe, who actually wasn’t at the conference, but he talked to me about what the OpenMRS project does, and who is using it in the world, and where it’s going in the future. We also talked a little bit about their Google Summer of Code students. Here’s my conversation with Ben.
OSEHRA Is On the Move
OSEHRA is on the Move. As we clear the hurdles of establishing Governance structure, clarifying Vision, implementing work Processes, and employing our IT Infrastructure and Development Tools, we simultaneously are preparing ourselves for the long run with the Open Source community. April 2012 was a busy month. We began the month by convening our first meeting of the OSEHRA Board of Directors; General (Retired) James Peake, Mr. Michael O’Neill and Dr. John Halamka. This inaugural Board meeting marks our official emergence as an independent organization with its own governing board. We will publish the meeting minutes on our web-site.
VA Begins Implementation of Open Source EHR
VA recently announced that we’ve taken a big step in the implementation of the open source software model for VistA: the selection of The Informatics Application Group (tiag), an innovative technology services company, to design and launch the Custodial Agent. Over the next several months, we will be working closely with tiag and their partners to create a Custodial Agent to provide structure for the community. One of the primary functions of the CA is to take care of the EHR: to make sure that it is freely available (like it is today), that new components are compatible with the existing software, and that the open source software licenses promote innovation and access. To accomplish this, the CA will maintain a code repository that contains all of the software–the code VA uses as well as new components we may consider–and, importantly, is universally accessible.
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Value Measurement and Return on Investment for EHRs
Health care provider institutions today are faced with many new challenges, including the need to implement Health Information Technology (HIT) solutions, especially Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. However, these institutions are also faced with a demand for capital investments outpacing their available funds. This means HIT or EHR projects must compete against other capital investment requests for scarce funds. Senior management teams will need to see the business and quality case that justify the return on investment (ROI) and return on quality (ROQ) before significant financial commitments for health information technology are made.