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French, German, Dutch and Italian Hackathons Fuel UK ODF Plugfest

Hackathons in Toulouse (France), Munich (Germany), Woerden (the Netherlands) and Bologna (Italy) involving software developers and public administrations, are providing input for the ODF Plugfest that will take place in London on December 8th and 9th. The first four meetings involve developers working on the Open Document Format ODF and the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools.

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Gates Foundation Spends Bulk Of Agriculture Grants In Rich Countries

John Vidal | The Guardian | November 3, 2014

Most of the $3bn (£1.8bn) that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given to benefit hungry people in the world’s poorest countries has been spent in the US, Britain and other rich countries, with only around 10% spent in Africa, new research suggests...

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Get Set For The Digital Health Festival

Staff Writer | eHealth Insider | March 13, 2014

EHealth Insider is launching a new Digital Health Festival to “take the pulse of digital health.”  Taking inspiration from music and cultural festivals, there will be a series of conferences, meetings and social events taking place at different venues at different times from 30 April to 16 May.

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Go and Play: Gaming and the NHS

Ben Heather | Digital Health | August 18, 2016

Pokemon Go has given a tantalising glimpse of mass gamification’s potential to improve health outcomes. But getting effective “health” games into the hands of patients and clinicians is no easy task. Ben Heather reports from last month’s Games for Health conference in Coventry...

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Google DeepMind, NHS Partnership Sparks Privacy Fears

Grant Ferowich | Fierce Healthcare | November 22, 2016

The artificial intelligence branch of Google and the Royal Free NHS agreed to a five-year deal that will allow Google DeepMind's algorithms to monitor the health data of 1.6 million patients. Google DeepMind and the National Health Service will partner in a move that alerts providers about abnormalities in patients’ vital signs and blood results—and privacy advocates have already started to cry foul...

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Government Attacked Over Deals With Fast-Food Industry: ‘Pure Illusion’ To Think This Approach Can Cut Obesity

Charlie Cooper | The Independent | February 3, 2014

Scathing World Health Organisation report warns UK cannot tackle epidemic unless Government changes policy Read More »

Government Leadership On Antibiotic Resistance — In Europe

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | July 3, 2014

A few pieces of news relative to antibiotic resistance caught my eye over the past few days. What they all had in common: Highly placed politicians stating unambiguously that antibiotic resistance should be a national and international priority...

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Governments embracing use of Drupal

Adrian Bridgwater | ComputerWeekly | October 21, 2012

The public sector's global use of open source technology is growing. Famed tech speaker Clay Shirky has been filmed for a TED talk saying that Germany is now publishing its laws on the GitHub online open source hosting repository and that the US state of Utah is also making its legislation available in Github so that individuals can see how the laws are being amended over time.

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Hackathon to Focus on Open Source Biometric System for mHealth in Poor Countries

Press Release | Redgate Software, SimPrints | October 26, 2015

A team from Redgate Software, the Cambridge UK based company behind the world’s leading SQL Server and .NET development tools, is devoting a week to work on the code for an open source biometric fingerprint system that will improve the lives of the poor in the developing world. The system is used by SimPrints, a non profit tech company working with the Gates Foundation and charities like Médecins Sans Frontières to design a low cost biometric scanner that can be deployed in the field. With the scanner, a health worker can swipe a patient’s fingerprint to find and view the correct health records on a mobile device, either online or offline.

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Hackathons Bring Open Source Innovation to Humanitarian Aid

In open source software, end users, decision makers, subject matter experts, and developers from around the world can work together to create great solutions. There are a lot of mature open source projects out there already in the field of humanitarian and development aid, for example: Ushahidi and Sahana in crisis management and information gathering, OpenMRS for medical records, Martus for secure information sharing in places with limited freedom of speech, and Mifos X, an open platform for financial inclusion for people in poor areas where financial services such as savings, payments, and loans are not offered...

HANDI Health Apps Looking for Workshop Speakers/Panelists

Just got an email from Jill Riley from HANDI Health calling for speakers and panelists for their upcoming conference on November 4th and 5th in Birmingham, UK. HANDI Health is a non-profit organization focused on the development of open source health IT solutions. They have had a series of very successful conferences and workshops and many senior members of UK's National Health System believe that HANDI has contributed more usable code than what they got from the $19.6 billion failure of their previous Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) effort. Read More »

How The Copyright Hub Wants To Bring Licensing Up To Date

Alastair Reid | journalism.co.uk | July 8, 2013

A non-profit organisation, launched today, will act as a resource, portal and forum for all those involved in copyright to assist with the process of licensing Read More »

How We Could Kill Superbugs Without Antibiotics

Charlie Sorrel | Co.Exist | March 1, 2016

Antibiotics will soon be useless, but U.K. scientists have come up with a new way to kill bacteria—and it's not with a drug. And perhaps the best thing about this approach is that bacteria may not be able to build resistance against it. A team from the University of East Anglia, publishing in the journal Nature, figured out that the key to destroying bacteria is understanding how they build their defensive walls. It’s like ruining an astronaut’s space suit instead of going after the astronauts inside...

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How Will Open Access Affect The Humanities And Social Sciences?

Ziyad Marar | SAGE Connection | July 1, 2013

How open access will affect the humanities and social sciences sector (HSS) has been a topic of hot debate, one that has been called even more into focus since the new RCUK OA policy became effective on 1 April this year. Read More »

Humetrix Demos SOS QR Emergency & Disaster Preparedness Mobile Platform at FCC Accessibility Innovations Expo

Press Release | Humetrix | October 20, 2017

Humetrix, developer of the award-winning SOS QR emergency mobile platform, last year’s recipient of the FCC Chairman’s Awards for Advancements in Accessibility (AAA), is honored to participate in this year’s FCC Accessibility Innovation Expo taking place on October 23 in Washington, DC. The Humetrix SOS QR technology has won multiple innovation awards since its first launch in 2014 being recognized by the White House as an innovative technology for disaster preparedness, winning the NHS TestBed competition last year, and the 2016 FCC Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility.

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