pandemic

See the following -

Mozilla Announces the First Set of COVID-19 Solutions Fund Recipients

Press Release | Mozilla | June 6, 2020

In less than two weeks, Mozilla received more than 160 applications from 30 countries for its COVID-19 Solutions Fund Awards. Today, the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS) is excited to announce its first three recipients. This Fund was established at the end of March, to offer up to $50,000 each to open source technology projects responding to the COVID-19 pandemic...In the coming weeks Mozilla will announce the remaining winning applicants. The application form has been closed for now, owing to the high number of submissions already being reviewed.

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Mozilla Open Source Support Launches COVID-19 Solutions Fund

Press Release | Mozilla | March 31, 2020

Mozilla is announcing today the creation of a COVID-19 Solutions Fund as part of the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS). Through this fund, we will provide awards of up to $50,000 each to open source technology projects which are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in some way. The MOSS Program, created in 2015, broadens access, increases security, and empowers users by providing catalytic funding to open source technologists. We have already seen inspiring examples of open source technology being used to increase the capacity of the world's healthcare systems to cope with this crisis.

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New Book from MIT Professor Helps Companies Reshape Supply Chain Strategy Beyond COVID-19

Press Release | MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics | October 2, 2020

In his new book The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19, published today, MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi maps how companies grappled with the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic and how they can survive and thrive as the crisis subsides. Sheffi pays particular attention to supply chain's role in helping companies manage and recover from the pandemic. Supply chains worldwide play a crucial role in sourcing, making, and delivering essential products to the world's 7.8 billion people at a price they can afford.

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New Research Shows Attackers Turning to Encrypted Cyber Attacks During Pandemic

Press Release | Zscaler, ThreatLabZ | November 10, 2020

Zscaler, Inc...today released its 2020 State of Encrypted Attacks report, published by the Zscaler ThreatLabZ team. The threat research reveals the emerging techniques and impacted industries behind a 260-percent spike in attacks using encrypted channels to bypass legacy security controls. The report provides guidance on how IT and security leaders can protect their enterprise from the rising trend of encrypted threats, based on insight sourced from over 6.6 billion encrypted threats across the Zscaler™ cloud from January through September 2020 over encrypted channels. To download and read, see the 2020 State of Encrypted Attacks.

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ONC HITAC Public Health Data Systems Task Force Releases Recommendations

On November 10, 2022 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) accepted and approved the recommendations of its ad hoc Public Health Data Systems Task Force. As discussed in an earlier post, the Task Force has been meeting since August 2022 and was charged with examining how improvements might be made in ONC certification rules for criteria related to public health data submission. In addition, and perhaps for the first time, the task force was also charged with developing recommendations related to the public health side of the equation: how public health data systems and/or standards might improve to ensure a smoother flow of information with clinical care. Read More »

ONC Tech Forum 2020—An Attendee's Perspective

I attended the ONC summer Tech Forum in August 2020 which brought together over 1,500 industry experts and Federal partners to discuss technical innovations in health information technology and their potential impacts on the healthcare ecosystem...One of the most interesting parts of the conversation was focused on the efforts made by Honk Kong to develop an open source digital health platform. Over the past 20+ years, Hong Kong has been pursuing a "one system, one record" policy primarily built on open source components. Though they had little money to invest at the beginning, for them open source is more about retaining control than about controlling cost (though the lower price tag certainly got them started down this path)...

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Open Source Solutions For Public Health Case Reporting and COVID-19

The United States is continuing its slow emergence from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states have started to reopen, with bars, restaurants, and many workplaces starting to fill. As people begin to spend more time together again, it is critically important that public health agencies do everything they can to help prevent further spread of the infection and continue to monitor the level of infection within the population. Data is an important tool that public health has to understand what is going on in the country. Years of limited government investment and neglect of current systems has limited public health's ability to meet the challenges of managing both localized outbreaks and pandemics.

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OpenMRS Receives Mozilla Open Source Support Program Award for COVID-19 Response

When the OpenMRS community learned about the COVID-19 Solutions Fund set up by Mozilla as a part of their ongoing Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS) in early April, we saw this as the perfect opportunity to support our community's COVID-19 response. The idea at the time? Build out a suite of science-based COVID-19 tools that could also be used for future disease outbreaks - and make them easily available to people looking for a way to manage COVID-19 patient data and surveillance efforts. OpenMRS Inc became one of 163 applicants from 30 countries that MOSS received within two months. We are honored to be among the six awardees to date, receiving a $49,754 award that will advance the COVID-19 Response Squad's work over the next three months.

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Pandemic Stresses National Need for Seamless Information Sharing Between Healthcare Providers, Black Book 2020 Interoperability Surveys

Press Release | Black Book Research | August 3, 2020

Two of three consumers revealed they will consider changing their physician and hospital providers in the coming year after learning how their health record was not shareable or available or was blocked in the past year...Five hundred and nine managers of frontline providers confirm the lack of general interoperability across the entire U.S. health care system has detracted from COVID-19 patient care, led to poor health outcomes and higher expenditures, and left population health data muddy and deficient...."Portability of data in the middle of this pandemic is vital," said Doug Brown, President of the survey organization Black Book Research. "But resolving systemic data blocking and platforms interfering with the exchange of patient data are not on the industry's front burner."

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Pandemics Are the Mother of Invention

Many believe that the Allies won WWII in large part because of how industry in the U.S. geared up to produce fantastic amounts of weapons and other war materials. It took some time for businesses to retool and get production lines flowing, during which the Axis powers made frightening advances, but once they did it was only a matter of time until the Allies would prevail. Similarly, COVID-19 is making scary inroads around the world, while businesses are still gearing up to produce the number of ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE), tests, and other badly needed supplies. COVID-19 is currently outnumbering these efforts, but eventually we'll get the necessary equipment in the needed amounts. Eventually. What intrigues me, though, is how people are innovating, inventing new solutions to the shortages we face. I want to highlight a few of these:

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Relentless Cyber Attacks Pressure Hospital Operations

Press Release | Fitch Ratings | July 22, 2021

Ever-increasing cyberattacks on the US public healthcare sector will place material revenue and expense pressures on not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals and health systems, Fitch Ratings says. The healthcare sector has seen a historic increase in the number and severity of cyber assaults over the past 18 months. The sector is viewed as a target-rich environment due to the large amount of sensitive data that healthcare entities maintain for patient care and operations.

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Resilience must be Blind to the Catalyst - Part I

On October 29 William Stemper, Forbes Councils Member put forth a thoughtful piece titled Three Steps To Building Resilience Through Technology.The article goes a long ways towards solidifying why resilience has a more urgent place in our businesses. I commend the article to the readers of this post. While Mr. Stemper focuses primarily on technology at his job at Comcast, he tees up some further, more holistic insights. Read More »

RSNA Launches International COVID-19 Open Radiology Database

Press Release | Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), RSNA COVID-19 AI Task Force | June 25, 2020

The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the RSNA COVID-19 AI Task Force today announced the launch of the RSNA International COVID-19 Open Radiology Database (RICORD). RICORD is envisioned as the largest open database of anonymized COVID-19 medical images in the world. More than 200 institutions around the world have expressed their interest in participating. The database will include supporting clinical information and expert annotations. It will be freely available to the global research and education communities.

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The Apache Software Foundation Welcomes its Global Community Online at ApacheCon Asia 2021

Press Release | Apache Software Foundation | June 9, 2021

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced keynotes, sponsors, and program for ApacheCon Asia, taking place online 6-8 August 2021. Registration is open and free for all attendees. "We're excited to hold ApacheCon Asia online following last year's highly successful ApacheCon@Home," said Sheng Wu, ApacheCon Asia co-Chair and member of the ASF Board of Directors. "The pandemic mobilized the global Apache community to collectively produce a first-rate online event, supported by an outstanding group of sponsors. We are proud to build on ApacheCon's new virtual format and bring the ApacheCon Asia program to participants joining us from any location."

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The Ransomware Attacks on Hospitals Are (Cyber) Criminal

One of the redeeming aspects of crises is that, amidst all the confusion, suffering, and loss, there are usually moments of grace, of humans showing their best nature... Unfortunately, crises also tend to bring out the worst of our natures... And then there are the cyberattacks. Last week the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and HHS issued a joint alert Ransomware Activity Targeting the Healthcare and Public Health Sector, warning that they have "credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers." I'll spare you the technical details of the expected attack strategies or suggested mitigation efforts, but I will note that they warned: "CISA, FBI, and HHS do not recommend paying ransom." Read More »