News

OpenEMR Receives Major News Coverage

OpenEMR is a free and open source electronic medical record (EMR) and medical practice management application that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and many other platforms. OpenEMR is ONC Certified Ambulatory EHR System and is one of the most popular open source EMR systems in use today. OpenEMR is a free and open source electronic medical record (EMR) and medical practice management application that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and many other platforms. OpenEMR is ONC Certified Ambulatory EHR System and is one of the most popular open source EMR systems in use today. Read More »

EHRs: Buy vs. Build, or the Best of Both

In the electronic health record (EHR) market, even though an enterprise solution is not an operating system, the parallels are clear. Healthcare organizations use expensive and complex proprietary systems that are difficult to maintain.  The leading systems have prohibitive total costs of ownership. Ownership is undermined by vendor lock. The most important and valuable enhancements are held back for the next chargeable upgrade.  Lack of interoperability is a business model.

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GreenDot open source Diabetes platform presented at Dreamforce 2012

GreenDot was part of the UCSF 'Unusual Thinkers' track presented at Dreamforce 2012, this past week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. GreenDot is  an evolving open source platform that makes diabetes data more accessible and via the web or mobile systems.  It collects data from different diabetes-related devices and stores it in a secure, open source platform. Read More »

Open Health Tools (OHT) Building for the Future

At the Open Health Tools (OHT) board meeting held this week in Baltimore, the OHT executive management team laid out the next steps to be taken as they work with the growing number of member organizations to transition into the next phase of their strategic plan. The board meeting was presided over by Dr. Robert Kolodner, the acting Chief Executive Officer of OHT.

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OKFest in Finland to Study Benefits of Open Knowledge and Open Development

The Open Knowledge Festival (OKFest) happens this September 17-22 in Helsinki, Finland with the theme Open Knowledge in Action. OKFest will explore the benefits of opening up knowledge and information, look at the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from openness, and discuss the impact that more transparency can have in our societies. OKFest will run 13 key Topic Streams, one of which will focus on the topic of ‘Open Development’.

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How Andrew Krzmarzick Uses Open Source To Empower Citizens In Government

As the Community Manager of GovLoop—a highly active online community connecting more than 50,000 public sector professionals, including Federal CTO Todd Park—Andrew Krzmarzick suspects his role is pretty similar to leading an open source project. The open source way guides the company's decisions, communications, and interactions. And open source solutions enable them to empower citizens around the country (and the world!) who don't want to wait for their cities to make updates to a page or build apps and resources that makes their lives easier. Read More »

RPMS & VistA in Hawaii and across the Pacific Rim

Over the years, Hawaii has given rise to a number of notable individuals and organizations that have played a key role in collaboratively developing and implementing innovative ‘open’ health IT initiatives. Here's a quick update on some of the latest activities related to the implementation of the open source VistA and RPMS electronic health record (EHR) systems in both the state of Hawaii and other island nations and territories across the Pacific rim. Read More »

The Anvil Podcast: OpenMRS

Several weeks ago I went to the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. The OpenMRS project was represented there by a number of the team members, and I was able to have a few informal conversations with them. After I got back home, I conducted an interview with Ben Wolfe, who actually wasn’t at the conference, but he talked to me about what the OpenMRS project does, and who is using it in the world, and where it’s going in the future. We also talked a little bit about their Google Summer of Code students. Here’s my conversation with Ben.

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Open Health & VistA Champion To Be Honored at White House Ceremony

U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Todd Park is going to honor Matt McCall, a well-known champion of 'Open Health' and VistA, at a White House ceremony tomorrow, Thursday August 23. As Open Health News reported nearly seven weeks ago, McCall has been named Presidential Innovation Fellow. In this role McCall is working on several major open source projects in healthcare including the Blue Button initiative as well as the HealtheMe personal health record (PHR). McCall has been active particularly in the VistA community and the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) code repository organization.

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2012 Open Source Think Tank Conference Exec Summary Released

The much awaited report on the 2012 Open Source Think Tank conference in Napa, CA has just been released. The Executive Summary of the report is available here. This report is of great significance as a significant portion of this year's Think Tank was focused on the open source strategy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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