healthcare

Are you a geek?

If so, driving the future of healthcare is now within your grasp.

What do you have to do?

Learn the M programming language, and teach it to others.

What’s the M programming language?

The M programming language is also known as MUMPS. Which stands for Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System.

M is a multi-user, strongly imperative language designed to » Read more

This year has seen a good deal of discussion about the escalating costs of healthcare and shrinking access to it. Most of the discussion has centered around how to fix the problems with a series of buzzwords entering our lexicon,  ACO, patient-centered health, EHR-EMR-HIT interoperability, and pay-for-performance among them. » Read more

Paul Graham coined the term 'ramen profitable' to describe the sort of start-up companies that can quickly reach profitability because they have low overhead and few expenses. I think of OpenNMS as 'sushi profitable'--that is, profitable enough to provide a few of the finer things in life. Like employee benefits. » Read more

Not long ago, I was in the audience at a symposium organized by the leaders of the Henry Ford Health System, a $4-billion-a-year health-and-hospital company based in Detroit. The organization's leaders had called the symposium to explain to local executives why they were making the biggest strategic bet in the system's history since its founding by Henry Ford himself back in 1915. » Read more

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Todd Park joined us on July 7 to talk about the power of open data for improving health. His position with HHS was created by the Obama administration as a change agent. And he's taking that role seriously.
» Read more

attachments: 

Todd Park webcast recording

Today the Department of Health and Human Services and the Institute of Medicine are holding their second forum to discuss how health data can be used to support healthcare systems and patients in informed decision making.

More than 40 companies will be participating, and the featured speakers include Aneesh Chopra, US CTO; Tim O'Reilly, O’Reilly Media; Matt Miller, NPR; Harvey Fineberg, IOM President; Todd Park, HHS CTO. » Read more

"If I tell you that this is the greatest good for a human being, to engage every day in arguments about virtue and the other things you have heard me talk about, examining both myself and others, and if I tell you the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be even less likely to believe what I am saying. But that's the way it is."
- Passage from Socrates' famous speech at his trial.

Big pharma is one of the main scapegoats for the steeply rising costs of medical care. This might make sense when you learn how staggering the pricetag on necessary processes—like clinical trials—can be.

According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s advocacy group, it costs $1.3B (in 2005 dollars) to bring a new drug to market. » Read more

It was my great pleasure to attend POSSCON 2011 this year. I had the opportunity to do a keynote, a panel discussion, and a technical talk, wearing the hats of both developer as well as "FOSS expert." And that dual-hat nature defines the conference itself quite well. Imagine if OSCON and OSBC had a baby: its name would be POSSCON. » Read more