When it comes to health care, testing is not what it used to be, or what it is going to be in the not-too-distant future. For example, confirmation of a cancer diagnosis is getting much easier. The New York Times reported that blood tests -- known as "liquid biopsies" -- have now been shown to generally match the results of a tumor biopsy. The blood tests look for DNA fragments from the tumor that signal its presence. The liquid biopsies are useful for both detecting the presence of a tumor and its ongoing monitoring. The current generation of tests are not perfect, with as many as 15% of tumors not generating enough DNA to be detected, but they do offer the advantage of not requiring an invasive procedure...
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Confessions of a Cross-Platform Developer
By Marcus D. Hanwell | June 16, 2016
Andreia Gaita is giving a talk at this year's OSCON, titled Confessions of a cross-platform developer. She's a long-time open source and Mono contributor, and develops primarily in C#/C++. Andreia works at GitHub, where she's focused on building the GitHub Extension manager for Visual Studio. I caught up with Andreia ahead of her talk to ask about cross-platform development and what she's learned in her 16 years as a cross-platform developer...
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OSEHRA 2016 Summit to Address Range of Open Health Projects from Global Health IT to the Next Steps for VistA
By Seong K. Mun, PhD | June 15, 2016
Can you believe that we are less than 2 weeks from the OSEHRA Summit? We and the open source community have had an interesting year full of changes and success stories. Our speakers will address all of these topics, including various aspects of VistA. Many things have been said about VistA both publically and privately in the past couple of months, so I want to point your attention to our Summit’s approach.
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Accountability Goes Both Ways
By Robin Muilwijk | June 15, 2016
Back in 1999, when eZ Systems was founded, it became one of the first organizations to pioneer an open source business model. Years later, in 2009, a Community Board was put in place to govern and grow the community—and to implement a system of accountability that incorporated the commercial entity and the community surrounding it. I'm now Chair of that board. And as Community Manager at eZ Systems, I want to share some of my views on the relationship between the company and the board, in light of one core value of The Open Organization: accountability...
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Not All Snake Oil Is Digital
By Kim Bellard | June 15, 2016
A different take on "snake oil" in health care was a thoughtful piece in Health Affairs, by David Newman and Amanda Frost, discussing the quality measurement morass in health care. They cite a study that estimated we spend some $15.4b annually collecting several thousand different quality measures, few of which have any meaning to consumers and all-too-few of which seem to be used to actively improve quality. It isn't that they don't think we should be measuring quality -- far from it -- but, rather: "Patients should not be able to choose substandard quality care, and substandard quality care should not be allowed to be offered in the market." Now, there's a novel concept!
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10 Tips for New GitHub Projects
By Jono Bacon | June 14, 2016
GitHub has become a fairly central part of many open source projects. Although many people focus on the code-hosting aspect of GitHub, the platform also includes comprehensive features for issue management, code review, and integration with many other tools and platforms. For new open source projects, however, getting started and ensuring that GitHub repos are in tip-top shape and ready to attract new developers can be a little overwhelming. To smooth this transition, here are 10 tips for rocking your octo-project and getting your new project off to a great start...
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Halamka on Why he Disagrees with the "Snake Oil" Analogy
By John D. Halamka, MD | June 14, 2016
Earlier this week, the American Medical Association CEO called digital healthcare products modern-day "snake oil." As a provider and a technologist, I think we need a deeper dive to understand the issues, avoiding the kind of hyperbole that’s so common in politics today. Paul B. Batalden, MD, Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), once said “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”. Let’s take a brief look at the history of national healthcare IT efforts from 2004-2016 to understand how we’ve achieved exactly the results we designed.
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Lessons from the Use of Open Source and Open Data in Nepal's Earthquake Relief
By Nirab Pudasaini | June 9, 2016
The power of an open source project like OpenStreetMap during a crisis like Nepal's earthquake is undeniable, and I had the opportunity to see it up close and personal. I worked with the Kathmandu Living Labs team, where I observed thousands of local and international volunteers collaborating to create data and tools. Responding agencies used the team's work to plan and execute their operations. The philosophy of Kathmandu Living Labs is that by collaboratively building upon existing work, we will reach much further and have a far greater impact than working on problems individually and from scratch...
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This Actually Is a Test
By Kim Bellard | June 8, 2016
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Halamka's Health IT Forecast in a "Time of Uncertainty"
By John D. Halamka, MD | June 8, 2016
The upcoming presidential election has everyone spooked - what if Donald Trump is actually elected? What will the transition of administrations, regardless of who is elected mean to healthcare and existing healthcare IT regulations? Will our strategic plans and priorities need to change? I’ve spoken to many people in government, industry and academia over the past month about the rapid pace of change stakeholders are feeling right now. Here are a few of their observations:
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3 Emerging Open Source Data Analytics Tools Beyond Apache Spark
By Sam Dean | June 7, 2016
On the data analytics front, profound change is in the air, and open source tools are leading many of the changes. Sure, you are probably familiar with some of the open source stars in this space, such as Hadoop and Apache Spark, but there is now a strong need for new tools that can holistically round out the data analytics ecosystem. Notably, many of these tools are customized to process streaming data...Streaming data analytics are needed for improved drug discovery...While Apache Spark grabs many of the headlines in the data analytics space, given billions of development dollars thrown at it by IBM and other companies, several unsung open source projects are also on the rise. Here are three emerging data analytics tools worth exploring:
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