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Scientists Manage Research with Open Source Zotero
Citation management tools are an easy way to organize electronic citations and PDFs into a single interface. They also allow you to export citations as a formatted bibliography. Many of them will also interact with a word processor for in-text citations. The two biggest cost-free, client-based tools are Mendeley and Zotero. I’m going to focus on Zotero, which is free and open source. It’s also the tool I like most for handling my own citations...
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Mozilla's Science Lab Is a Hub for the Open Research Community
Since the launch last June of Mozilla Science Lab, we’ve been working to unpack what science on the web and like the web means, and what Mozilla can do to support it. The Science Lab was created to serve as a neutral broker and hub for the open science community—a means of bridging the gap between the early adopters and the many scientists who understand the value of open science, but who have not yet (for a number of reasons) mapped that understanding onto their day-to-day workflow...
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Open Source Electronic Health Records For Education And Training
In spite of being very involved in the field of Health Informatics I only recently became aware of VistA for Education (VFE), which has all of the aforementioned attributes of an excellent solution for EHR education purposes. VFE was developed as a result of a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to supplement the ONC Health Information Technology (HIT) curriculum. Electronic health records (EHRs) are more than just the electronic equivalent of paper-based health records. Electronic health data is easier to search, share and archive, compared to paper records. Additionally, EHRs can be embedded with clinical decision support to alert and remind physicians of patient safety and preventive medicine measures.
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The VA Waitlist Fiasco: VistA Should Not be Thrown Out With the Bathwater
Without a doubt, the death of American veterans as a result of the VA waitlist debacle is tragic and unacceptable. The Obama administration must move quickly and deliberately to fix the underlying problems and restore faith in the agency. If these issues were common throughout the VA network of hospitals and clinics, it might make sense to consider dramatic, earth-shaking alternatives like moving veterans to private providers and shuttering the VA. But they are not common. Indeed, as Washington Monthly reporter Phillip Longman has documented, the VA’s challenges are regional, not pervasive. Read More »
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Three Areas Where Health Information Technology Needs to Get its House in Order
Health reform is taking off, thanks to pressure from insurers, the promise with which innovative technologies tease us for low-cost treatments, and regulatory mandates dating back to the HITECH act of 2009. Recent hopeful signs for wider adoption of health technologies include FDA forebearance from regulating consumer health apps, calls for more support for telemedicine, and new health announcements from tech giants such as Apple and Google. While technologists push forward in all these areas, we need to keep in mind that several big unsolved problems remain. Let's not get lost in the details--these major issues have to be tackled head on. Read More »
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21st Century Healthcare: the Open Platform that will Transform
As we begin, we restate the widely held view that 21st Century healthcare is under pressure, in a state of near-crisis in many places where the burden of disease and the limitations of current healthcare systems are becoming ever more apparent. We acknowledge that at the clinical frontline that staff are already working under immense pressure , in unsustainable ways and that we must find ways to “work smarter, not harder”. So too we must find ways to improve the quality, safety, timeliness and cost effectiveness of modern medicine. We must become more effective at efforts to improve through clinical audit and ensure our clinical research efforts are more enlightening than ever before..
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Open Humans Project Allows Volunteers to Share Their Personal Health Data
While many researchers encounter no privacy-based barriers to releasing data, those working with human participants, such as doctors, psychologists, and geneticists, have a difficult problem to surmount...A new project, Open Humans, seeks to resolve the issue by finding patients who are willing—even eager—to share their personal data. Read More »
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‘Open-Source’ Seeds Released to Nurture Patent-Free Food
An ‘open-source’ seed initiative has released 36 varieties of 14 food crops, which the project’s leaders say could help poor farmers get access to better quality seeds. The new seed varieties have been available for delivery globally from mid-May, says Irwin Goldman, a vegetable breeder and horticulturalist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was involved in the release. Read More »
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5 Assistive Technology Open Source Programs
Assistive technology software is any program or operating system feature designed to let a user with cognitive, sensory, or physical impairments use a computer system. Innovations in assistive technology software can make a huge difference in the daily lives of these people... Read More »
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Rethinking Open Source Collaboration
The open source world has been through a significant period of change in the last fifteen years. What started out as volunteers getting together to work on projects for fun has now turned into a billion-dollar industry. Although the spotlight is shone on open source more than ever before and the technology and tools have evolved, the core fundamentals of how we build open source software are still the same at their core – yet the rigor and quality expectations have changed. I think this is a great opportunity for our wider community as well as an organization.
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