Open Health News Weekly Summary - 10/20/2013

October 20, 2013 - The following is a brief listing of some of the hot news items, selected news clips, feature stories, and blogs posted on Open Health News (OHNews) over the past week that we believe will be of interest to our readers across the U.S. and around the world. Actually, this week there was so much news that it's not really a brief list.

Some of the key themes dominating the news this week involved:  (1) Major problems with the startup of the Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX) in the U.S. as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) moves forward; (2) the impacts of the U.S. Government shutdown on a broad range of organizations and activities across both the public and private sector; (3) Oracle putting a foot in its mouth with the release of a strange and self serving report attacking open source software; (4) growth of the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) movement; (5) Blue Button enhancements and activities; and so much more.

Roger Maduro
Publisher & Managing Editor, Open Health News

Headlines

• Latest 'Open Source' & eHealth News from Europe
• My Updated 2013 List of 'Open Source' Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems
• Australia to follow New Zealand's lead on changes to software patent laws
• News Flash: Oracle Still Hates Open Source Software
• A Miniature 'Open Source' Mobile Clinic For The Developing World
• DoD, VA award iEHR interoperability re-compete contract
• Open-Source Everything: The Moral of the Healthcare.Gov Debacle
• Blue Button Technology Highlighted At Consumer Health IT Summit
• A Few Ways The Government Shutdown Could Harm Your Health (and the World’s)
• Open-Source Platform Gains Popularity In Government
• 2013 Open Hardware Summit
• Massive open online courses (MOOC) emerge as corporate training option
• Federal Shutdown: We Miss Our Data
• Quality Systems Inc. releases Mirth Connect 3.0 Open Source Healthcare Integration Engine
• State-wide Health Information Exchange (HIE) Implementation Activities
• Furloughed VA Closes Benefits Offices, Stops Health IT Work
• CDC: Shutdown Strains Foodborne Illness Tracking
• Open Source Hardware (OSHW) movement strengthens
• Salmonella aqnd The Shutdown: CDC Furloughs Harm Public Health
• Is Open Source Technology Right For Your Clinical Studies?
• In Five Years, Microsoft’s Share Of Personal Computing Fell From 90 To 33%
• The Healthcare.Gov Fiasco
• VA Names Scheduling App Contest Winners
• Blue Button Expands Access To Include CCDs, OpenNotes
• Spotlight On Open Access at the Smithsonian Libraries
• Strange Sales Tactic: Oracle Blasts Defense-VA on Use of Open Source Software
• NBC/WSJ Poll: 60 Percent Say Fire Every Member Of Congress
• Arduino Creator Explains Why Open Source Matters In Hardware, Too
• Black Duck Fully Integrates Open Source Consulting Capabilities
• Oroville Hospital’s Scheduler: a winning technology
• Los Alamos, Sandia Labs Prepare To Shut Down Amid Budget Impasse

Selected Summaries

There were so many news items this week, we are providing summaries of just a handful of the news items.

Latest 'Open Source' & eHealth News from Europe
By Peter Groen | October 14, 2013 - The news just keeps coming about the widespread acceptance and increasingly rapid deployment and use of 'open source' software solutions by local and national government agencies in Europe. Federal, state, and local government agencies across the U.S. should pay close attention...

Groen's HIT Blog:  My Updated 2013 List of 'Open Source' Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems - I've been following and reporting on 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) and/or electronic medical record (EMR) systems over the past decade. In the late 1990's and early years of the 21st century, there were several hundred open source EHR/EMR projects that were initiated and posted on sites like SourceForge, GitHub, GForge, Freshmeat, ...

Australia to follow New Zealand's lead on changes to software patent laws
By Peter Groen | October 15, 2013 - The movement to pass new laws doing away with software patents continues to pick up steam. Following on the heels of action by the government of New Zealand to abolish software patents, the Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) is urging the Australian government to do the same. In addition to New Zealand's recent ban on software patents, the European Union (EU) has been debating similar moves for more than a decade. Brazil, Russia, India and China are also beginning to get on board with the idea...

News Flash: Oracle Still Hates Open Source Software
Matt Asay | ReadWrite | October 15, 2013 - It's no wonder that Google, Red Hat and others have been abandoning Oracle's most visible open-source project, MySQL...

A Miniature 'Open Source' Mobile Clinic For The Developing World
Ben Schiller | Co.Exist | October 16, 2013 - Basic medical tests once required a trip to a clinic. These days, anyone can measure their pulse, heart rate, and blood pressure using cheap digital equipment...

Open-Source Everything: The Moral of the Healthcare.gov Debacle
Paul Ford | Business Week | October 16, 2013 - The U.S. federal government, led by the executive branch, should make all taxpayer-funded software development open-sourced by default. In the short run, this would help to prevent the recurrence of problems like those that plague healthcare.gov. Longer term, it will lead to better, more secure software and could allow the government to deliver a range of services more effectively. And it would enrich democracy to boot...