COVID-19 pandemic

See the following -

Open Source Solutions for Immunization Tracking and COVID-19

The United States is starting to emerge from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states are starting to reopen, and while higher education will likely stay largely remote this fall, primary and secondary schools are expected to reopen as the economy tries to get back on its feet. As both children and adults begin to spend more time together again, it is important to understand the impact that COVID-19 is having on current immunization practices and services, and how open source software is being leveraged to keep the population safe.

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Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense Issues Call For a National Public Health Data System

In April 2022 the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense released a new report titled The Athena Agenda: Advancing the Apollo Program for Biodefense. Established in 2014, the privately-funded commission convenes periodically and conducts research to assess the state of US biodefense efforts and to make recommendations for change and improvement. Spurred by the events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, this report challenges the country to prepare itself for future pandemics by establishing aggressive goals, gathering our “best and brightest” talent, developing action-oriented plans, and funding their accomplishment as the “next Apollo Program.”

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careMESH Raises $5M in Seed Funding to Scale Integration of its Healthcare Communications Platform

Press Release | careMESH | June 16, 2020

careMESH today announced that it has closed an initial $5M seed round led by Assurance Capital and Pavey Family Investments, with participation by other early-stage investor funds and individuals. The funding will be used to scale adoption of its first-of-a-kind communications platform, which brings a National Provider Directory, patient event notifications, secure communications, and transition of care workflows into a single service for hospitals, health systems and other healthcare delivery organizations

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Convening Public Benefit And Charitable Foundations Working In Open Domains

Press Release | Open Source Initiative (OSI) | July 12, 2023

The public policy team of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has launched the Open Policy Alliance (OPA), a new program aimed at building and supporting a coalition of underrepresented voices from public benefit and charitable foundations. The OPA, has been created in response to increased demand for public dialog and stakeholder engagement in the Open Source software community as well as adjacent areas such as open content, research, AI and data. Open Source ecosystem veteran Deborah Bryant, OSI US policy director, will lead the program. “While Open Source is a global, borderless activity, public policies are developed locally,” said Bryant. “The OPA will focus on education in the US while exchanging and sharing information with like-minded organizations globally. The OPA seeks to empower these voices and enable them to actively participate in educating and informing US public policy decisions related to Open Source software, content, research and education.”

Cyberattacks Predicted to Triple in 2021, Black Book State of the Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Industry Report

Press Release | Black Book Market Research | November 12, 2020

Seventy-three percent of health system, hospital and physician organizations report their infrastructures are unprepared to respond. The survey results estimated 1500 healthcare providers are vulnerable to data breaches of 500 or more records, representing a three hundred percent increase over this year. Black Book Market Research LLC surveyed 2,464 security professionals from 705 provider organizations to identify gaps, vulnerabilities and deficiencies that persist in keeping hospitals and physicians proverbial sitting ducks for data breaches and cyber-attacks.

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Emergency Open Source EMR Created In A Week To Respond To Covid-19 Crisis

Press Release | Regenstrief Institute | April 22, 2021

A team from Regenstrief Institute leveraged OpenMRS, a global open-source electronic medical record (EMR), to create an emergency EMR for Indianapolis first responders preparing for a possible influx of COVID-19 patients. This process was completed in a week to allow Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services (IEMS) to register patients, collect basic clinical information, and send these encounters to Indiana's health information exchange, a crucial element to help the response to the COVID-19 pandemic...This work demonstrates that it is possible to leverage existing tools to create EMRs in emergency situations to improve crisis response. "We learned valuable lessons from this experience that can be applied to future emergencies. This system can be adapted to work in other states or even countries, and it can be done very quickly," said Burke Mamlin, M.D., a project leader and member of Regenstrief's Global Health Informatics program. "This shows the value of open source and how it can lead to global goods that can benefit us in the United States."

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How to Contribute to Open Source Healthcare Projects for COVID-19

Many of those that are familiar with the maker movement, including me, believe there is a significant opportunity to apply open source design principles and mass-scale collaborative distributed manufacturing technologies (like open source 3D printing) to at least partially overcome medical supply shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic...Many people agree there is enormous potential with the approach despite the challenges and have started to self-organize to develop open source hardware to fight COVID-19. The largest group is Project Open Air. They are a group of "Helpful Engineers" who have congregated to aid in the COVID-19 pandemic response by developing both open source hardware and open source software. The Helpful Engineers are working on medical devices such as open source ventilators, to create a solution that can be quickly reproduced and assembled locally worldwide. Read More »

J P Systems Wins $120 Million VA Terminology Services Support Recompete

Press Release | J P Systems, Inc. | June 28, 2021

JPSys, received notification of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recompete contract award, which is a single award, Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for clinical terminology standards services with a ceiling threshold of $120 million. The contract includes a base 5 year period from 6/28/2021 through 6/27/2026. JPSys, founded in 1983, is owned by Jackie Mulrooney and Galen Mulrooney. In 2015 JPSys won the first Terminology Standards Support IDIQ contract for 100 M. This follow on win solidifies the firm for the next 7 years. JPSys has been supporting the Veteran's Health Administrations as a prime since 9/29/2015 and as a subcontractor since 1998.

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Medicines for Malaria Venture Releases Report on how R&D Partnerships Serving Neglected Communities have Developed Dozens of Life-Saving Innovations Since 2010

Press Release | Medicines for Malaria Venture | January 28, 2021

The public-private initiatives that contributed to COVID-19 vaccine and drug development have showcased a model for accelerating biomedical innovation. This is another powerful example of how public-private partnerships have established themselves as powerhouses for fighting global health threats. According to a new report launched today from a group of 12 product development partnerships (PDPs), over the last decade, such alliances have brought to market 66 new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for a number of diseases—including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, meningitis and sleeping sickness. These innovations have reached and benefitted more than 2.4 billion people in low-income countries.

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Mozilla Announces Second Set of COVID-19 Solutions Fund Recipients

Press Release | Mozilla | June 8, 2020

Innovations spanning food supplies, medical records and PPE manufacture were today included in the final three awards made by Mozilla from its COVID-19 Solutions Fund. The Fund was established at the end of March by the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS), to offer up to $50,000 each to open source technology projects responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In just two months, the Fund received 163 applicants from 30 countries and is now closed to new applications.

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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 (MOSS)

The Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) awards program, created in 2015, broadens access, increases security, and empowers users by providing catalytic funding to open source technologists. In addition to the COVID-19 Solutions Fund, MOSS has three tracks

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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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ONC Timeline for TEFCA Going Live in 2022

Today we are pleased to announce the timeline for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). The 21st Century Cures Act, signed by President Obama in 2016, calls on ONC to "develop or support a trusted exchange framework, including a common agreement among health information networks nationally."... The timeline released today-for completion of the Trusted Exchange Framework, the Common Agreement Version 1 and the Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) Technical Framework (QTF) Version 1-establishes our goal to have this new network open for participation in the first quarter (Q1) of calendar year 2022.

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ONC's Efforts to Advance Worldwide Digital Health - The Global Digital Health Partnership White Papers

As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to see how digital health plays a vital role in care delivery. ONC recognizes the importance of advancing digital health at domestic and global levels. As discussed in a previous blog post, part of ONC's global engagement includes representing the United States in the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP). The GDHP currently runs five work streams: Interoperability, Clinical and Consumer Engagement, Cyber Security, Evidence and Evaluation, and Policy Environments.

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