US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

In May 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to stand up its own version of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in order to address the increasing cybersecurity risks to the health care sector. But creating the Health Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, or HCCIC, was the easy part. Soon after, the newfound center landed in the spotlight, sparking agency and industry drama about the role and scope of HHS authorities in information sharing.

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The academic biomedical research community should improve its ability to mitigate and recover from the impacts of disasters, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The consequences of recent disasters, from hurricanes to cyberattacks, have shown that the investments of the U.S. federal government and other research sponsors -- which total about $27 billion annually -- are not uniformly secure. The report recommends 10 steps that academic research institutions, researchers, and research sponsors should take to bolster the resilience of academic biomedical research.

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Defense Strategies Institute is proud to announce their 11th DoD/VA and Gov Health IT Summit occurring on October 4-5, 2016. With the central theme of “Advancing the Coordination of Health IT,” the Summit will bring together senior leaders from DoD, VA, HHS, Federal and State agencies, along with leaders from Industry and Academia that support them, for two days of Government briefings and informal discussions in their "Town Hall" setting in Alexandria, VA. DSI has created a Summit that will bring together a variety of stakeholders in order to build out two days of discussion and debates that tackle many of the areas involved in modernizing the DoD and VA health systems in order to provide better care to our warfighters and veterans.

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America's hometown heroes are on the front line when responding to biological incidents. These include health care providers, public health professionals, EMTs, firefighters and police. But a new report from the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense says the thousands of first responders at state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments that form the backbone of our nation will have to fend for themselves for far too long until federal assets arrive to assist with response. Holding the Line on Biodefense: State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Reinforcements Needed recommends eight key steps that will increase the capability of the SLTT public and private sectors to share with the federal government the burden of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from large-scale biological events.

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careMESH, the only service provider to guarantee digital delivery of patient health information to any U.S.-based clinician, announced that it has achieved ONC-Health IT 2015 Edition Health IT Module Certification for reporting on the delivery of transitions of care. This ONC-Health IT Certification gives customers the assurance that careMESH can be used for digital communications and its reports can be used in Promoting Interoperability attestation. "Achieving 2015 ONC certification was important so that our customers could not only rely on careMESH for digital communications with the outside world, but also on our reports for attestation," said careMESH President and COO, Justin Sims. 

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