The medical IT industry faces its ‘stickiest challenge’ says an Infoworld article about the new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) recently re-affirmed by president Bush: ‘…he long journey to electronic records was meant to unfold around a package of “interlocking” federal rules, which include standards for transmitting health data, privacy guidelines for data sharing, and standards for ensuring the security of medical data. But satisfying the cumbersome privacy component — which requires notifying patients as to how data will be used, kept, and disclosed; offering patients a chance to see and amend records; and asking for patient consent before disclosing data — has posed the stickiest challenge to health care IT staffs…’
Economist: Out in the open
The Economist has a series of articles on the economic aspects of software, including an article on open source software: ‘…the open-source movement is less about “world domination”, which hackers often joke about, and more about an industry which, thanks to the Internet, is learning that there is value in deep co-operation as well as in hard competition. “Much more than a cause, the open-source movement is an effect of the Internet,” says Tim O’Reilly, head of an eponymous firm that publishes computer books, and a leading open-source thinker. Open-source is often described as the software industry come full circle. Indeed, in the early days of computing, programs came bundled with the hardware and complete with the source code (the set of computer instructions which are then translated into binary code, the form of software that computers can understand and act on). Pioneers needed to tweak their programs, and were happy to share the improvements they made…’
FreePM Adds 3000 Drug Objects to Formulary
Updated: 1/12/2003 FreePM is now TORCH. One of the more active practice management projects, FreePM now has 3000 drug objects available for download for FreePM formulary use. This is a timely development given the amount of press attention being given to online prescription ordering and its attendent benefits in reduced errors.
Filmless Radiology: Open Source Picture Archiving and Communication System
The first ever (as far as I know)Open-Source Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS), for running a filmless X-Ray service can be found here.
From Auntminnie.com , a radiology site:
“At the 2001 European Congress of Radiology in Vienna, Dr. Claudio Saccavini from the department of medical and diagnostic sciences at the University of Padova in Italy talked about his team’s efforts to build a Linux-based PACS.
Saccavini and his team plan to distribute their PACS software on the Internet as a no-cost open-source application in the coming months at http://www.rad.unipd.it/raynux/.”
Proprietary PACS systems are incredibly expensive, so this is potentially a highly significant development.
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.asp?Sec=sup&Sub=pac&Pag=dis&ItemId=50608
FreePM-0.9.0b Released
We are happy to announce the 0.9.0b release of the electronic medical record system, FreePM.
A link to the download area and the interactive online demo are available at http://www.freepm.com
With this release we have a more mature template system, basic report examples and dynamic PDF generation. One of the samples is a HCFA1500 (originally coded by Jeff Bauer). Access these examples from the Reports section. These examples were written to present source code detailing how to write your own reports for your individual needs.
Please see the documentation for other changes, installation instructions and upgrade information.
E-mailing Your eDoctor
Ron Risley, a California-based family doctor and psychiatrist, wrote an interesting and informative artice for TidBits eZINE. The articles are entitled: What’s up, EDoc? Emailing your Doctor, Part 1 / Part 2
PlanetIT: Linux Used for Telemedicine
PlanetIT has an article on RedHat Linux in telemedicine: ‘…Welcome to the world of telemedicine, where health-care organizations use technology and the Internet to deliver medicine and treatment to patients worldwide. While this kind of health-care innovation isn’t new, using Linux to make it happen surely is.’
Minoru, SPIRIT to Host OSCAR
Minoru Development Corp. is announcing that the newly funded OSCAR (Open Source Computerized Ambulatory Records) development project will be hosted on its SPIRIT consortium project site. OSCAR is a primary care patient record system that has been available as open source since 1988. The OSCAR project just received $1M Canadian in funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health Primary Care Reform initiative to enhance and expand the system.
Originally written for MS-DOS, the system has evolved into a multi-faceted practice management system and is now available in a web based form.
Dave Scott of Minoru Development Corp. says: “Our firm worked with McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario (CA) to secure funding worth $1M Cdn to expand the deployment of OSCAR – an open
source computer practice management system. This is significant because of the dollar amount, but more importantly, it underscores the awareness of both the provincial government and the university of the up-and-coming open source technological wave. Open source technologies such as the Linux operating system are becoming more and more important in industry and public administration.”
Freemed 0.2.1.1 Available
The FreeMed practice management software project is announcing the release of its latest version 0.2.1.1 on Sourceforge. This release: ‘…features improved billing functions, new loadable modules and increased speed of processing over the last production release. You can obtain this release “without charge”…[by] download from Sourceforge. Please remember to return improvents as part of your agreement for its use under its GPL Licence. Many thanks again to Fred Forester who provided the Free coding for this release. We appreciate your contributions very much, Fred!’
Red Hat Linux 7.1 Distribution Released
RedHat has announced the release of RedHat Linux 7.1 which has a slew of improvements including kernel 2.4 which makes it even more robust for enterprise and mission-critical applications. According to the Red Hat Linux 7.1 Press Release and other Red Hat information, 7.1 also includes both the GNOME and KDE windows-like desktops. And for you Mozilla fans, Red Hat Linux 7.1 ships with Mozilla. MozillaQuest has a detailed article here.