COVID-19

See the following -

COVIDLiMS

COVIDLiMS is a complete Laboratory Information Management System (LiMS) – pre-configured with SARS-CoV-2 assay methods, but ready to expand to any other types of testing. It’s the quick-response answer for labs: whenever any new infectious disease appears, simply add the assays you need yourself and begin testing immediately. In fact, CovidLiMS supports absolutely any type of testing at all, and comes with a host of general features to fully manage your laboratory data – safely, securely and reliably – no matter how your business grows.

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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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Data Management for Large-scale COVID-19 Immunization: This is all not as simple as it seems

There is a global race for the development of a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Finding a vaccine that works and receives approval is only part of the process. There are a series of other steps that need to be taken so that the vaccine can be delivered. These include the mass production of the vaccine, shipment, administration and record-keeping. This may be even more complex as there may be several vaccines. In this article we review some of these issues with a particular focus on the United States.

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From Struggling with a Virus to Celebrating Life at is Virtual Best

This proliferation of, and quest for Virtual Health and Wellbeing solutions, as well as the dire need I'm feeling and observing for more community and human connection, sparked in my mind and heart a new idea for a better way to Learn about, Connect with, and Experience what's best in this rapidly evolving field. This need and passion inspired me to design FestiHealth, the first Virtual Health Festival that's driven by a mission to do good and have fun by educating people about, connecting them to, and engaging them in a healthier, happier life! FestiHealth opens the door for everyone to a brighter and happier future, enabled by a vibrant community that is creating and using innovative Virtual Health & Wellness solutions to make life more enjoyable, and care more accessible and affordable for all.

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Harvard Medical School, Kiel University of Applied Sciences and others are using Nextcloud in the response to COVID-19

Press Release | Nextcloud | February 3, 2021

Nextcloud Hub is used in dozens of universities, hospitals, and medical institutes in various ways, aiding in fighting the pandemic. The DICOM viewer app for Nextcloud in particular is used in Brazil in the fight against COVID-19. At the Kiel University of Applied Sciences Nextcloud is used in the development of bluetooth measurement algorithms from the OHIOH.de research team. This is a research project using machine learning and AI to improve the accuracy of Bluetooth-based COVID-19 tracking apps where information is collected through "Bluetooth". The application focuses on research topics to warn and help with required actions in fighting and minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

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Hiding Our Heads in the Sand - Why the US is Unprepared for Pandemics and Disasters

A new report from the Trust for America's Health minces no words. President and CEO John Auerbach charges: COVID-19 has shined a harsh spotlight on the country's lack of preparedness for dealing with threats to Americans' well-being. Years of cutting funding for public health and emergency preparedness programs has left the nation with a smaller-than-necessary public health workforce, limited testing capacity, an insufficient national stockpile, and archaic disease tracking systems - in summary, twentieth-century tools for dealing with twenty-first-century challenges.

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HLN Releases Open Source Vaccine Provider Agreement System

Press Release | HLN Consulting | February 10, 2021
VPAS Logo

HLN Consulting has just released a critical application to help complete the CDC's COVID-19 vaccination provider agreement requirements. HLN is a leading public health informatics consulting company that is focused on developing andsupporting robust open source solutions that address pressing public health requirements. HLN's application is designed to assist medical providers with a tool that can enhance and facilitate their tracking of critical vaccination information...

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How Laboratories and their Systems can Weather Natural Disasters and Pandemics

We are currently experiencing a global pandemic - which, while perhaps included in disaster preparedness Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by many labs as a possible disaster, still has caught most the infrastructure and health systems of most nations largely unprepared, and is causing major disruption because it was arguably not seen as one of the most likely events. Disaster preparedness has typically tended to focus on IT and data management risks and/or natural disasters. SOPs center around standard, daily lab safety. The truth is that whatever the odds of a particular disaster, they become 100% once they happen. It's important to have sufficient risk-reduction SOPs in play, and a good Continuity Of Operations Plan (COOP) for each potential scenario to ensure the best chance of coping during the event and recovering afterwards.

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How open source software is fighting COVID-19

Since the end of January, the [open source] community has contributed to thousands of open source repositories that mention coronavirus or COVID-19. These repositories consist of datasets, models, visualizations, web and mobile applications, and more, and the majority are written in JavaScript and Python. Previously, we shared information about several open hardware makers helping to stop the spread and suffering caused by the coronavirus. Here, we're sharing four (of many) examples of how the open source software community is responding to coronavirus and COVID-19, with the goal of celebrating the creators and the overall impact the open source community is making on the world right now.

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How This Open Source Security Tool Halted Significant DDos Attacks

In 2020, our ways of living and working were turned completely upside down in a matter of days. As COVID-19 began to spread across the globe, we brought our companies home, and staying connected to our colleagues, friends, and family online became a critical necessity. This opened the door for hackers to cause disruption; for example, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks around the world were up 151% in the first half of the year, according to Neustar.

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 »

LabLynx

LabLynx, Inc. was the first Laboratory Informatics provider to deliver a true browser-based Laboratory Information Management Solution (LIMS) in 1997. The core LabLynx team has combined software development and laboratory management experience of over 575 human years invested in the LabLynx LIMS product lines. Additionally, LabLynx has been the leader in establishing the paradigm of the LIMS as a platform-based, total laboratory solution, rather than just a means to track samples.

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LabLynx Joins the COVID-19 Fight by Introducing Laboratory System Dedicated to Infectious Disease Diagnostic Testing

Press Release | LabLynx | April 9, 2020

LabLynx, Inc., long-time leader in enterprise-level cloud-hosted LIMS/LIS, today announced it has developed the world's first LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) dedicated specifically to COVID-19 diagnostic testing. Called "CovidLiMS," its main features include, crucially, swift setup-to-live time: 2-5 days, including training, according to LabLynx President John H. Jones.

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Linux Foundation Launches Public Health Initiative to Respond to COVID-19 and Future Pandemics with Open Source Solutions

Press Release | Linux Foundation Public Health | July 20, 2020

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today launched a new initiative to use open source technologies to help public health authorities (PHAs) around the world combat COVID-19 and future epidemics. The new Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH) initiative is launching with seven Premier members - Cisco, doc.ai, Geometer, IBM, NearForm, Tencent, and VMware - and two hosted exposure notifications projects, COVID Shield and COVID Green, which are currently being deployed in Canada, Ireland, and several U.S. states.

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Marc Andreessen: It is Time for America to Build

Marc Andreessen | a16z | April 18, 2020

...I think building is how we reboot the American dream. The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don't, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price. What's the American dream? The opportunity to have a home of your own, and a family you can provide for. We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare, to make sure that every American can realize the dream, and the only way to do that is to build.

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