News

Summaries of open source, health care, or health IT news and information from various sources on the web selected by Open Health News (OHNews) staff. Links are provided to the original news or information source, e.g. news article, web site, journal,blog, video, etc.

See the following -

The Return On Investment For Big Data Is Far Lower Than Promised

Brittany Ballenstedt | Nextgov | November 12, 2013

With new computers and software enabling the ability to store and analyze data faster and at a lower cost than ever before, it’s all too easy for federal leaders to become overwhelmed, so much so that many are failing to tie that data to specific mission-focused goals. Read More »

Typewriter Man: Ralph Nader on the Failure of High-tech Consumer protests

Kirk Victor | Nextgov | June 8, 2012

Nader views the breakthroughs in telecommunications often as distractions rather than tools of empowerment. It’s no easier to mobilize consumers today, he says, than in his low-tech heyday.

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VA Claims Backlog Saddles Disabled Veterans

Mitch Shaw | Standard-Examiner | February 5, 2014

Department of Veterans Affairs officials say they want to end their massive benefits backlog for disabled veterans by next year, but a new study says progress on the initiative has stalled. Read More »

VA Stops Releasing Data On Injured Vets As Total Reaches Grim Milestone [EXCLUSIVE]

Jamie Reno | International Business Times | November 1, 2013

The United States has likely reached a grim but historic milestone in the war on terror: 1 million veterans injured from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But you haven't heard this reported anywhere else. Why? Because the government is no longer sharing this information with the public. Read More »

VA to Kick Off Hunt For New Patient Scheduling System Next Month

Jack Moore | Nextgov | August 26, 2014

The Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking a “cutting-edge” commercial, off-the-shelf scheduling system to replace the clunky legacy module that helped mire the agency in controversy over long wait times faced by veterans seeking care. By the end of September, VA plans to issue a solicitation for a new system to manage the scheduling of veterans’ medical appointments. Read More »

Webinos Whitepaper On Open Governance

George Voulgaris | Webinos | October 24, 2012

In March 2011 the webinos consortium published a deliverable titled “Industry landscape, governance, licensing and IPR frameworks”.  The purpose of this report was to assess the state of the art of technologies that will be used to realize the webinos platform, to understand related industry activities and to identify appropriate governance, licensing and IPR frameworks for webinos... Read More »

What Is OSEHRA And VistA?

Matthew McCall | Project Blue Button | October 1, 2012

According to the oral history of the Department of Veterans Affairs, of which I have been an attentive listener over the years, once upon a time, innovation ruled the land. VistA, the legendary Electronic Health Record, was born in the basements of VA medical centers, and raised like a child by doting clinicians and wise developers... Read More »

White House Officials: To Manage the Government, Open Its Data

Jack Corrigan | Next Gov | September 26, 2017

White House officials see standardizing federal data as a crucial step to making government more effective and efficient. Opening that data to the public could also spur economic growth, they said. “Open data is not just a transparency exercise,” said acting Federal Chief Information Officer Margie Graves. “It really is integral to the management of government itself. Everybody recognizes that this is the platform on which we have to build our house”...

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White House Vastly Overstates Federal Transparency, Auditors Report

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | October 30, 2013

The U.S. has only completed half the commitments it made two years ago under an international government transparency agreement, an independent auditor found recently. Read More »

Who Are They Going To Blame?

Paul Levy | Not Running A Hospital | October 31, 2012

Once the dust settles, or the flood water recedes (in this case), someone will conduct a root cause analysis to figure out why the emergency generator at NYU Langone Medical Center failed to operate during Hurricane Sandy when the Con Edison power supply was disrupted.  Given that this investigation will involve two sectors of society (politics and health care) most characterized by a need to find someone to blame, some poor person at the hospital will be deemed to be the culprit. Read More »

Who's To Blame When IT Systems Fail?

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | October 11, 2013

When it comes to government technology, assigning responsibility can be tricky. Read More »

Why The Experts Are Probably Wrong About The Healthcare.gov Crack-Up

John Pavley | Huffington Post | October 7, 2013

Many technology experts are blaming the software behind Healthcare.gov for all the problems Americans have encountered while trying to sign up for health insurance in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. Read More »

Will Open Government Make Canada’s Health Agencies More Transparent

Paul C. Hébert MD, et. al. | CMAJ | March 21, 2011

On Mar. 18, 2011, the Harper government in Canada announced its “Open Government” strategy. Although it appears to have been borrowed from President Barack Obama’s 'Open Government' directive, the piecemeal and toothless approach adopted in Canada falls short of the openness that has become the default position of all government departments in the United States. To follow the US example, openness in health information would require directing Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada first to be part of the approach and then to develop and report on how they will concretely achieve more “open government.”

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Young College Graduates Are $3,200 Poorer Than They Were In 2000: EPI

Bonnie Kavoussi | Huffington Post | April 4, 2013

Recent college graduates trying to make it on their own have truly been living through a lost decade. Read More »

‘An Embarrassment’: U.S. Health Care Far from the Top in Global Study

Ariana Eunjung Cha | The Washington Post | May 18, 2017

Americans grumble all the time about the quality of our health-care system, but when we're dealing with serious issues, such as injuries from an auto accident or cancer, we often count our blessings that we live in a wealthy country that has well-trained doctors with access to the latest medical technology. Yet those factors don't always correlate with staying alive. That's the distressing finding from a global study of what researchers call “amenable mortality,” or deaths that theoretically could have been avoided by timely and effective medical care...

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