Open Health News (OHN) Weekly Summary - 1/11/2014

Over the past several weeks, we’ve witnessed a number of announcements, launches, and news stories related to open access (OA). This roundup of top stories includes the launch of a student-developed OA tool, the boycott of “luxury” journals by a Nobel Prize winner and his lab, a new national OA policy, and the debut of a long-awaited, long-planned-for initiative to support gold OA. Read More »

The good news: the total U.S. healthcare spending in 2012 grew slightly slower than the economy, causing a dip in healthcare's share of the economy. The bad news: healthcare spending still comprises almost a fifth of the U.S. economy at 17.2 percent in 2012, down from 17.3 percent in 2011. Read More »

A rural Montana hospital has filed suit against big name electronic health record system provider NextGen Healthcare, alleging the company violated its contract by both failing to install an EHR system by the set deadline and not providing a system that meets 2014 federal meaningful use criteria. Read More »

Bringing the total cost to $200 million, the parent company of Maine Medical Center will be spending tens of millions more on training for its problematic Epic electronic health record implementation. Read More »

For most people how the human brain works remains a mystery, let alone how to hack it.  A new Kickstarter campaign created by engineers Joel Murphy and Conor Russomanno aims to change this by putting an affordable, open-source brain-computer interface kit in the hands & minds of anyone. Read More »

Tizen, an upcoming open-source operating system for mobile and connected devices, may go beyond the territories of iOS and Android and find its way to other consumer devices like printers, cameras and even smart TVs, Read More »

Epson announced its Pulsense line of watches and wristbands for fitness, health, and wellness monitoring at this year’s CES conference. Pulsense is a device worn on the wrist that can monitor heart rate, activity levels, calories burnt, and sleep patterns. Read More »

To help systems designers more easily navigate the quickly evolving consumer wearables market, Freescale Semiconductor is enabling an open-source, scalable reference platform that gives OEMs the building blocks they need to rapidly develop a wide range of wearable product designs from a common platform. Read More »

HP and Lenovo are betting that Android PCs can convert both office and home Windows PC users to Android. Read More »

The Department of Defense is officially sticking with its tried-and-true AHLTA electronic health records system for at least the next four or five years according to a recently released procurement document. [...] Read More »

A company called Not Impossible Labs has come up with one of the best uses for 3D printer technology we've ever heard of: printing low-cost prosthetic arms for people, mainly children, who have lost limbs in the war-torn country of Sudan. Read More »

...When companies think of open source, these days they think "business agility," a quality they increasingly value above all others in the fast-changing marketplace. Read More »

An array of new personal health devices aims to help you beat depression, lose weight, reduce stress or improve your fitness level. Read More »