Information Week is reporting. “A federal appeals court has struck down a lower court ruling that found that open source copyrights may not be legally enforceable if they’re licensed under terms that are “intentionally broad.” Ruling on an appeal brought by software developer Robert Jacobsen, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Wednesday that open source users that do not comply with the software’s strict licensing terms can, in fact, be sued for copyright infringement — even if the software is free…” Thanks to Will Ross for this link.

North Carolina Mental Health is asking for (large download of RFP pdf) Open Source only Veterans Affairs VistA proposals according to Modern Healthcare (registration required): “North Carolina’s Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services Division has issued a request for proposals to vendors to install a commercially supported, open-source version of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, or VistA, clinical information system at its three hospitals and three clinics.

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The Connecting California to Improve Patient Care in 2008 conference will occur on Friday July 18, 2008 — 9:00 A.M. to 4:15 P.M. Ukiah Valley Conference Center, 200 S. School St., Ukiah, California Conference Cost – $35 (includes lunch). This looks like one of those small conferences that end up becoming very important.

New England Journal of Medicine has the results of a study on the very low use of EHR’s in primary care with NY Times take on the study. Unfortunately, the message seems to be that financial incentives to doctors for pretty much any proprietary EHR system is what is needed with no analysis or thought whatsoever of their problems vs. open source ones:

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From the hardhats blog came this and this discussion of Cerner dissing GoogleHealth partnership as well as that Cerner’s model is threatened by open-source. The next article is about Wal-Mart’s impact with its retail stores and how it is a boost for eClinicalWorks and a jab for ’70’s technology’. I say: “Hey Wal-Mart, why don’t you use and fund development of ClearHealth/MirrorMed instead?”

Google Health has launched here. Tech Crunch has a ‘Quick Hands-On’ look here. More news as it occurs.

Linux Insider has an article about a Florida hospital and others going Linux: The healthcare industry in general and hospitals in particular are very conservative about trying anything new. Healthcare officials are often reluctant to risk the reliability and security they perceive in their existing computer networks, according to Red Hat officials specializing in healthcare technology. Over the last two years, however, healthcare and hospital network administrators are discovering open source as more affordable than proprietary installations.

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OpenMRS is excited to accept applications for the 2008 Google Summer of Code. It’s the community’s second year of participation in the project, which brought a dozen open source developers into the community to build facilities such as statistical patient matching algorithms, and quick installers into OpenMRS. If you’re an actively enrolled student, and would like to spend your summer learning how to participate in an open source community, come visit our project page, and apply. For more information, you can visit http://soc2008.openmrs.org. There’s also a fairly active irc channel (#openmrs on freenode), if you have questions.

At the HIMSS 2008 conference in Orlando, Florida, the Open eHealth Foundation released a press statement describing the formation of this new organization with new partners including InterComponentWare, Agfa HealthCare and Sun Microsystems. More after the break.

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The Linux version of Synapse EMR has been refreshed in preparation for the release of a LivePC containing both the client and server. The latest release is now almost functionally equivalent to the Windows version. Instructions are available on how to install the client on Ubuntu 7.04.