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Extremadura, Canary Islands Pilot eHealth Card
The governments of Extremadura and the Canary Islands, two of Spain’s autonomous regions, are testing the interoperability of an eHealth card, to be used for prescriptions and in pharmacies in both regions. The administrations of the two regions presented the eHealth card on 16 February, at an eHealth conference in Madrid. During the pilot-phase, Extremadura will dispense prescriptions to a fictional patient, to test if the medicines can be picked up at pharmacies on the Canary Islands. Read More »
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OpenClinica 2015 Global Conference to Be Held in Amsterdam
OpenClinica’s Global Conference, or OC15, is a much-anticipated yearly event of networking, knowledge-exchange and innovation held to bring together the OpenClinica community, a group of users, developers, partners, and the team behind the open source electronic data capture (EDC) system with the same name. This year, OC15 will take place in Amsterdam, on May 31 - June 1, promising an exciting array of sessions, workshops and demos to showcase the community’s progress and facilitate new friendships and collaborations between organizations using and pushing OpenClinica forward.
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Wall Street Journal: "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle"
This Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Op-Ed could have been entitled "President Sucker: Led Down the Garden Path by The Healthcare IT Industry." It is entitled "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle", as below. First, though: On Feb. 18, 2009 the WSJ published the following Letter to the Editor authored by me...I have a different view on who is deceiving whom. In fact, it is the government that has been deceived by the HIT industry and its pundits. Stated directly, the administration is deluded about the true difficulty of making large-scale health IT work. The beneficiaries will largely be the IT industry and IT management consultants.
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11 Ways To Get Involved With Humanitarian FOSS
Lending a digital hand for humanitarian projects is just a click away. Whether you have five minutes or a few hours, you can make a difference with a variety of Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) projects. The level of skills required vary from web search, verification, mapping, translation, training, and open source software development. Along the journey of changing the world, you can meet like minds and hone your skills. The key is to ask yourself: What do I want to do? How can I get started? How can I find the right project and community?
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US Defense Think Tank Calls for DoD to Adopt the Open Source VistA EHR and Avoid Closed and Proprietary EHRs.
One of the most prestigious U.S. defense think tanks, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), issued a white paper Thursday calling on the Department of Defense (DoD) to replace their existing dysfunctional “vendor-lock” medical records system with an electronic health records system (EHR) that is "extensible, flexible and easy to safely modify and upgrade as technology improves and interoperability demands evolve." The white paper warns that a "closed and proprietary" commercial EHR - such as the ones offered by Epic, Cerner or Allscripts - will lead to "vendor-lock” and isolation of health data. Read More »
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Closed Records, EHR Decertification and the DoD
In anticipation of House of Cards Season 4, and with all due respect to the show’s creators, I think real life is giving us a perfect plotline that includes politicians, corporate interests, their lobbyists and a big fat government contract. Maybe Francis and Claire have me seeing conspiracies everywhere, but it seems a chain of recent health IT events have created intrigue in what is historically our staid, conservative industry. Follow the timeline with me and decide for yourself if I’m hearing black helicopters.
Ushahidi Working to Open "Social-Good" Data
Most software produces data, and many data owners are currently working out how to release their data publicly as part of a wider “data for good” movement that includes groups like the Engine Room, NGOs, private individuals, communities, and companies. Ushahidi users are no exception to this, and we’ve been working hard to provide ways to access and release their datasets and on the issues and considerations needed to do that... Read More »
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OPENPediatrics Open Sources Medical Diagrams and Animations
OPENPediatrics (OP), a free online education and best practice sharing community for pediatric clinicians worldwide, has launched a new library of openly licensed medical animations and illustrations, making them available for non-commercial educational use. The new multimedia library draws on the extensive collection of animations and illustrations developed for didactic and procedural videos created for the OP clinician community site.
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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 »
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The Future of Devices for Health is not Wearables
Dozens of new self-tracking wearable devices appear every month. They target health and quality of life applications, from sleep to physical activity. And, they are packaged as smart watches or as standalone pieces, launched under the umbrella of startups and industry leaders alike. Currently, there is no shortage of thoughtfully designed wearable devices promising to improve our health and quality of life, but amidst the ongoing technological deluge—do you think the future will be wearable or anti-wearable?...
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