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On A Mission To Make Linux As Accessible As Possible
This article details the circumstances behind my switch away from proprietary operating systems and my switch to Linux. Like many, I switched out of frustration with other operating systems and not directly because of Linux's open source model. I developed my passion for that after the switch was made. It was August 18, 2011. I had just completed the umpteenth restoration from factory of Windows 7 on my HP laptop. I had just installed the open source screen reader I was using at the time, NVDA, as well as some of the applications I used on a daily basis, such as the Mush-Z MUSHClient...
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How Do We Balance Civil Liberties With Treatment Of The Mentally Ill?
In January of this year, political analyst Norman Ornstein lost his 34-year-old son, Matthew, to accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. While Matthew’s death was a tragic blow to family and friends, it was not the kind of out-of-the-blue shock that comes with absolutely no forewarning. Matthew, as Ornstein says in a New York Times op-ed published last month, had struggled with mental illness for 10 years, which contributed to poor decision making and his untimely death. A resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and writer for The Atlantic and Washington Post, Ornstein says that perhaps the most difficult aspect of Matthew’s death was the inability of family and friends to help treat Matthew’s mental health challenges after he had his initial psychotic break.
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Using the Open Source Way to Solve the Innovation Problem
A couple of weeks ago a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of one of the largest mobile telecommunications companies in the world asked me how a large organization such as hers should think about organizing itself to maintain control over costs and risks while still giving their global organization the freedom to innovate...When asked if I had any insights from my work with other large global organizations, it occurred to me the ideal model she is seeking is very aligned to how an Open Source project like Drupal is managed (a subject I have more than a passing interest in).
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WellTrackONE and Zoeticx Demonstrate Interoperability by Integrating Good Samaritan’s EHR System with Indiana HIE
The long awaited road to true healthcare IT system interoperability is being implemented at Good Samaritan in Indiana, enabling the 232-bed community health-care facility to better deliver on its commitment to delivering exceptional patient care. The system will also enable the hospital to substantially increase their practice’s revenue while containing healthcare system integration costs....The integration is being made possible with Zoeticx’s Patient-Clarity interoperability platform which will integrate WellTrackONE’s Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) patient reports with Indiana’s Health Information Exchange (IHIE) and the hospital’s Allscripts EHR.
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How I Ended Up Working in Open Source Healthcare
These days I am one of a small handful of core committers to OpenEMR, but more importantly I am the visible face of the project through my role as the current president of the OEMR.org 501(c)(3), standing on the contributions of a respectable, worldwide, community of active users, contributing developers, and vendors. We have done some seemingly impossible things, like get the OpenEMR project through the ONC's "Meaningful Use" Certification, without which it would have all but died out in the United States. Now, with the project 14 years old and about to be recertified under Meaningful Use Stage 2, it's time to reimagine and reengineer the core without losing the goodness we have and the good will of the community...
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Using Open Source APIs to Ceate Secure Health IT Solutions
In the Healthcare, world trust is the basis for all interactions. The Patient-Doctor relationship is the primary example of Trust and is probably the most important relationship in Health. As Health goes digital it is essential that we bring trust with us into the digital world. One of the big challenges is to do this without the trust process becoming either intrusive or limiting. The issue of trust has been a critical component I have been focused on as we design the next generation of BlueButton for Medicare beneficiaries: BlueButtonOnFHIR.
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Mozilla Contributor Creates Diabetes Project for the Masses
I recently founded my own open source project, Glucosio, to bring open source diabetes management and research software to the masses. My years of contributing to open source projects and observing various structures has really come in handy being a project leader now. I'm very excited about the future of Glucosio, but most importantly about the future open source and how that will play out in health and medicine. There is a lot of potential for software innovation in healthcare, and I think we will soon see a startup disrupt healthcare and medicine with open source solutions...
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Analyze, Collaborate, and Share Research with Open Source Tools
The most powerful free and open source (FOSS) statistics program, though, is R. Originally a FOSS version of the statistics language S, R has shown explosive growth over the last few years, with some 7,000 add-on packages available to handle nearly any statistical requirement and an increasing number of books, courses, and blogs (e.g. R-bloggers) focusing on practical usage. Some websites concentrate specifically on how to use R for psychological research—an example is William Revelle's Personality Project, which also offers an R package called psych, a toolbox for personality, psychometrics, and experimental psychology...
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Naturopathic Physicians and the Veterans Administration
AMVETS, one of the country's largest veterans service organizations, has teamed up with the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) to promote natural, non-pharmacological approaches to treating veterans suffering from chronic pain. In a Dear Colleague letter in the U.S. House of Representatives, lawmakers have called on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to take steps to employ licensed naturopathic physicians, who are trained in natural, non-invasive methods of healing. Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI), concerned about the dangers of overmedicating veterans, especially with prescribed opioid drugs, has penned a letter that many colleagues have signed including Representatives Julia Brownley (D-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and Walter Jones (R-NC) as the letter's initial signators.
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Four PLOS authors receive 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Through the Breakthrough Prize – initiated and funded in 2012 by Bay Area biotechnology innovators, social media venture capitalists and successful internet entrepreneurs – outstanding scientists working in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics receive recognition, money and a bit of glamour. This year, four of the five scientists awarded a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences chose to publish some of their work in Open Access journals over the course of their careers. In so doing, Edward S. Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, John Hardy and Svante Pääbo ensure their research is available for distribution, discovery and reuse, introducing opportunities for all scientists to build on their discoveries...
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