Last week I attended the Open Knowledge Festival (OKFest) organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation in Helsinki Finland. [My] interest and reason for attending was to find out as much as I could about open Data, Development as I could from people that had already started on the open journey in their countries and some even gotten their governments to sign on... Read More »

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT launched its Blue Button video competition Oct. 1 to create awareness of consumers having easy online access to their health information, and to motivate them in how they might use it. Read More »

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT launched its Blue Button video competition Oct. 1 to create awareness of consumers having easy online access to their health information, and to motivate them in how they might use it. Read More »

First, a bit of transparency: I believe in universal health coverage and don't think the word "socialized," as in socialized medicine, is a four-letter word. How exactly the nation should roll out that universal coverage--without creating a bureaucratic nightmare or bankrupting the country--is beyond my expertise, but in principle it's the right direction. Read More »

I've recently had the pleasure of taking part in two hacker events organised within the context of healthcare and, specifically, the UK's National Health Service.[...] To be clear (and more seriously), I am using the term "hacker" in the way it is used within Information Technology circles: a hacker is a person with a passion for exploring and solving problems through writing and sharing software. Read More »

NHS Hack weekends are driven by Ross Jones and Dr Carl Jones, collectively known as Open Health Care, both committed to producing high quality software that improves health outcomes. Borne out of a similar extremely successful  event in London, these hack days bring together software developers and coders with doctors, health care leaders and practitioners to create disruptive solutions to problems in healthcare services. Read More »

So it has finally happened: a patent reform bill has actually become law. Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted 89-9 to send H.R. 1249 to the White House, where it was signed into law today.  While I have pointed out in the past that this bill misses out on several aspects of reform that previous bills attempted, it does include some useful aspects. Read More »

Space is big. Really big. That means a lot of information, and where there’s data, there’s opportunity for automation. Now, NASA wants your help to create new APIs for its extensive and ever-growing data archives. Read More »

Max Baucus' bill makes you pay a fine if you don't have health insurance—unless you're American Indian. Read More »

School of Information Studies (iSchool) students Chris Becker and Isaac Budmen will attend the 3rd Annual 2012 Open Source Hardware Summit on September 27 in New York City to explore the possibilities offered by open source technology. Read More »