SCALE 5x Opens For Registration

SCALE 5X registration is now open! The Expo is now accepting early registrations. A full pass (expo floor and seminars is $60 until January 24, 2007, and $70 thereafter, a student pass is $30 until January 24, 2007, and $35 thereafter, and an expo-floor-only pass is $10. Join us for over 40 seminars and tutorials. Presentations from Chris Dibona, Ted Haeger, Don Marti, and more! Expo floor will include exhibits by Dell, ClearHealth, Google, Krugle, Ingres, Trolltech, and others.

Response to ZDnet article on Medsphere

Dana Blankenhorn has posted an article regarding my claim that Medsphere has betrayed the community on ZDnet. Is Medsphere taking it back, is a great article overall, but its conclusion is terrible. From the article: Medsphere�s board probably feels it was a Little Red Hen, doing all the work for a lazy community�s profit.

In his defense, Dana is one of many people who do not understand that Medspheres business model relies entirely on the community-built VistA codebase. Given its current actions, this makes Medsphere alot more like a “slimy brown leech” than a “little red hen”. Still I am glad to see that the mainstream blogs are starting the pick this up. It is important for Medspheres board to see that this issue will only get bigger and bigger, as it recieves more publicity.

Fred Trotter

Google and Health Informatics

Over the years google has provided more than a few effective free to use solutions. Does this blog post by google’s VP mark the beginnings of innovative ‘google’ type solutions for Healthcare? While the blog mainly focuses around improving search of Healthcare Information (for patients?).
He does allude to the concept of electronic personal health records. It would be interesting to see what eventuates of this. While google solutions do not tend to be opensource they tend to open in terms of publishing APIs, allowing extensibility etc. On the other hand, some would argue that this furthers the sinister google trend of learning more and more about its users.