Global Information Technology Report

The Global Information Technology Report 2008–2009 appears at a difficult time for the global economic system. Thus, it is important to reaffirm the crucial role of ICT for general competitiveness and progress and the importance of continuing to invest in ICT infrastructure and related services, as well as in innovation.

Published by the World Economic Forum under the theme “Mobility in a Networked World”, this year’s Report places a particular focus on the relationship and interrelations between mobility and ICT. With coverage of 134 economies worldwide, the Report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The Report stresses the importance of ICT as a catalyst for growth in the current global turmoil.

Electronic Health Records: A Primer

A Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records: A Primer - by Lucien Wulsin and Adam Dougherty.

Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records (HIT-EHR) is a broad term that refers to the generation, storage, and transmission of electronic health information. Information management is central to the healthcare system, and HIT-EHR is widely viewed as the necessary step to bring healthcare into the 21st century.

The benefits of health information technology are clear in theory, but adoption rates are low. While the development and wide-scale use of HIT-EHR has experienced obstacles, it is gaining ground in both the public and private sectors. This report highlights recent developments and explains various aspects of HIT-EHR, including definitions, current usage, how it can benefit healthcare quality and costs, barriers to its development, and current public and private efforts to implement and expand it. The report is based in the US, but the findings and lessons are applicable anywhere.

A Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records: A Primer is downloadable free of charge as a PDF file here.

SOCOL@R - Index of Open Educational Resources

SOCOL@R - an index of Open Educational Resources (OER) - has been launched by China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation (CEPIEC).

Along with the growth of network technology, open access (OA) resources achieved unprecedented development. OA journals and OA repositories provide reseachers with a new source of academic information. However, OA resources are spread in different organizations’ proxies and websites around the world, which makes full-scale search extremely difficult. Previously, the consolidation of OA resources was mainly conducted through two projects — DOAJ and OpenDOAR. Also, some similar work has been done by institutes and individuals. But none of these projects have made the majority of existing OA resource available to users in one single platform.

CEPIEC considers it is a necessity to collect and aggregate the OA journals and repositories internationally into one website in a searchable format for the convenience of end users. This is the aim of building Socolar — To provide a one stop search for all the open access information worldwide.