I’ve written several posts over the past two years about the need for innovation in healthcare IT - deploying self-developed apps, leveraging third party cloud hosted functions, and embracing the internet of things. I’ve previously discussed establishing a center for innovation. In preparation, I’ve worked on innovative projects in industry accelerators, academic collaborations, and government sponsored hack-a-thons. What has worked?...
Feature Articles
3-D Printing Turns Nanomachines into Life-Size Workers
By Chenfeng Ke | March 28, 2017
Nanomachines are tiny molecules – more than 10,000 lined up side by side would be narrower than the diameter of a human hair – that can move when they receive an external stimulus. They can already deliver medication within a body and serve as computer memories at the microscopic level. But as machines go, they haven’t been able to do much physical work – until now. My lab has used nano-sized building blocks to design a smart material that can perform work at a macroscopic scale, visible to the eye. A 3-D-printed lattice cube made out of polymer can lift 15 times its own weight – the equivalent of a human being lifting a car...
Halamka Talks About Embracing Innovation in Healthcare IT
By John D. Halamka, MD | March 22, 2017
OpenMRS Google Code-In Student Nji Collins Wins Grand Prize
By Jeff Neiman | March 27, 2017
In Nov. 2016, Nji Collins (aka Collin Grimm), a high school student from Bamenda, Cameroon, participated in Google Code-In, the global online coding contest which for pre-university students aged 13 to 17. GCI introduces young talented minds to the incredible open-source world. During the seven-week program, Grimm completed 20 tasks using the Open Medical Record System, or OpenMRS, a platform that focuses on improving healthcare service in developing countries. We spoke with the young programmer to learn more about his story and interest in computer science and how he came to compete in Google Code-In...
7 Ways to Discuss Legal Matters with an Open Community
By Simon Phipps | March 23, 2017
Having watched a fair number of people attempt to engage both the Open Source Initiative's licensing evaluation community and the Apache Software Foundation's legal affairs committee, I'd like to offer some hints and tips for succeeding when it's your turn to conduct a legal discussion with an open community. First and foremost, make sure the person conducting the conversation is both qualified and empowered. Don't send proxies; they simply frustrate the community, who quickly work out that your representative is always playing the second-hand car salesman and going to the back room to ask for a deal...
Open Project Collaboration from Elementary to University Classrooms
By Aria F. Chernik | March 22, 2017
The practice of teaching should be built upon collaboration and remixing content. When a friend asks us to explain something, we don't trademark our answer or deliver a monologue without asking for input. This is a simple example, but it gets to the heart of the dysfunctional design inherent in our existing education system...19th-century state of education is dangerously out of step with our 21st-century world. Worse, it leaches away our students' passion for academic and lifelong learning. We must infuse the vital, human element of collaboration into our vision for education transformation.
Obliterate the Cost of Consumer Products with Open Hardware
By Joshua Pearce | March 24, 2017
If you're looking for free and open source designs to replicate on your desktop 3D printer, you have about two million choices. Because the open source ethic is rooted so deeply in the 3D printing community, many of the consumer products you would normally buy are already among those millions of predesigned products. You can download the designs and save a lot of money. My group has shown in studies in both 2013 (on a self-built 3D printer) and 2017 (on an out-of-the box 3D printer) that peer-to-peer sharing prosumers (producing consumers) gain an incredible return on investment: > 100% at minimum and more likely ~1000% by 3D printing products to offset purchases only once a week...
A Lesson in Accountability from My Uber Driver
By Sam Knuth | July 7, 2017
The first thing I noticed was how nice Kyle's car was. It wasn't too fancy (a late model Toyota Camry) but inside it was spotless. We were sitting in leather seats. On the back of the passenger seat, Kyle had mounted a tablet customers could use to watch TV if they wanted (not that I was particularly interested in television during this 4:30 a.m. ride to the airport). I told Kyle how nice I thought his car was when he offered me a bottle of water. This started a conversation in which I learned a lot about Kyle—and gleaned a 22 minute lesson in what it's like to truly take accountability for your career in an open organization...
Health Care in a Post-Privacy World
By Kim Bellard | March 14, 2017
Someone knows you are reading this. They know what device you are using. They know if you make it all the way to the end (which I hope you do!). They may be watching you read it, and listening to you. They know exactly where you are right now, and where you've been. As FBI Director James Comey recently proclaimed, "there is no thing as absolute privacy in America." Director Comey was speaking about legal snooping, authorized by the courts and carried out by law enforcement agencies, but, in many ways, that may be the least of our privacy concerns...
Open Source in Death and Beyond
By Jeff Macharyas | March 14, 2017
Benjamin Franklin was known to say, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." There are open source solutions for completing your taxes, such as Open Tax Solver, but what about the other side of that quote? What does open source have to do with death? It's quite a lively subject, it seems. I know you are just dying to know, so let's dig in. We all experience death and it becomes a long drawn out process of paperwork and burial rituals that we hope doesn't weigh too much on the loved ones we've left behind. The open source community has given this process some thought, not surprisingly. They've lent their mindshare towards rethinking how to deal with that final episode of life. It turns out, not only is open source great in life, but it comes in handy in death, too...
How to Grow Healthy Open Source Project Infrastructures
By Elizabeth K. Joseph | March 30, 2017
In 2013 I joined the OpenStack Infrastructure team. In the four years I spent with the team, I learned a considerable amount about the value of hosting an infrastructure for an open source project in the open itself. In 2014 I gave a talk at All Things Open and was interviewed by Jason Baker about how we'd done our systems administration in the open. My involvement on this team led me to advocate for systems administrators to use revision control and learn about tools for working with a distributed team. At the OpenStack Summit in Austin in 2016, our team did a talk on navigating the open source OpenStack Infrastructure...
Open Source Project Management Can Be Risky Business
By Jacob F. Roecker | March 22, 2017
Our digital lives are powered by programming philosophers who choose to develop their code out in the open. All programs begin with lines of instruction. When ready for execution these lines of instruction are converted to a binary format that the computer can execute. Open source programs are programs where the human readable code is accessible to anyone. This philosophy of openness and freedom has allowed these projects to impact the lives of everyone. The Linux kernel is the core of all Android devices, and nearly a third of all Internet traffic rides on just one openly developed project, Netflix...
How Disaster Relief Efforts Could Be Improved with Game Theory
By Anna Nagurney | April 17, 2017
The number of disasters has doubled globally since the 1980s, with the damage and losses estimated at an average US$100 billion a year since the new millennium, and the number of people affected also growing. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest natural disaster in the U.S., with estimates between $100 billion and $125 billion. The death toll of Katrina is still being debated, but we know that at least 2,000 were killed, and thousands were left homeless. Worldwide, the toll is staggering. The triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that started March 11, 2011 in Fukushima, Japan killed thousands, as did the 2010 Haiti earthquake...
Could Billion Dollar EHRs Bankrupt the Country?
By Irv Lichtenwald | March 7, 2017
Earlier this year, Monmouth University conducted a survey to determine which issues were most important as the country transitions to a new presidential administration. Among all the potential concerns Americans now face, the issue that rises to the top is healthcare costs. How acute a concern is this? It’s significant enough that, when asked the open-ended question, “turning to issues closer to home, what is the biggest concern facing your family right now?”, 25 percent of respondents made it their number one issue...
Your Smartphone or Your Life...or, the Dangers of Addictive Technology
By Kim Bellard | March 7, 2017
Rep. Jason Chaffetz's recent remarks suggesting that some Americans should invest in their health instead of in a new iPhone reminded me of nothing so much of the old Jack Benny bit, where Benny is accosted by a robber who threatens "your money or your life." When Benny doesn't immediately respond, the robber prompts him, and the supposedly miserly Benny snaps back, "I'm thinking it over." I suspect that, like Mr. Benny, many of us would have a tough choice between our smartphones (and our other devices) and our health. It may be not so that we're miserly as it is that we're addicted.
Law for All: Free Law Project’s Radical Approach to Legal Transparency
By Jennie Rose Halperin | July 9, 2017
What does open access look like for the law? Through free access to primary legal sources, the Free Law Project provides an important service to advocates, journalists, researchers, and the public. Joining with an international movement for Free Access to Law, the US-based organization helps people know their rights in an increasingly uncertain and rapidly changing legal era. The Free Law Project is an umbrella organization for a variety of projects, including Court Listener for millions of pieces of legal data, the RECAP project (begun by Aaron Swartz in 2009) to freely open the PACER archive of legal data, a complete repository of Supreme Court Data, a repository of judicial opinions and seals, and a Free Law Reporters Database...
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