COVID-19

See the following -

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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Michigan Tech Engineering Team Joins Open Source Ventilator Movement

Press Release | Michigan Technological University | March 20, 2020

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the research community is looking for solutions. In addition to work on vaccines and medicine, medical technology is needed. In severe cases of COVID-19, the disease attacks the respiratory system, and one of the major bottlenecks in treatment is having enough ventilators. The open-source hardware community wants to change that. Joshua Pearce...an open-source hardware expert and co-editor-in-chief of HardwareX [explained] that 3D-printed lab hardware and other open-source tech can be cost-effective and encourages design improvement. "Even complex medical devices are not outside the realm of possibility anymore."

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Moving Towards An Open Platform Paradigm: The Digital Health Strategy For Catalonia

At the 2021 Digital health & Wellness Summit 2021 (DHWS21) in Barcelona, it was clear that integrated care based on openEHR will be a major focus for Catalonia's healthcare. Catalonia is a globally respected region for its innovative approach to healthcare. The major challenge the region faces is similar to what most healthcare organizations are seeing: inability to share or access data between different systems...The current EHR systems are also proving to be too expensive to maintain, as discussed by members of the panel. For this reasons the region has opted for a different approach. Catalonia is now investing 40 million Euros in a new digital health strategy that focuses on developing a new model of information systems and electronic health records (EHRs) that are based on openEHR’s - open data standards.

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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 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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Ocean Platform Joins apps.health Marketplace to Help Connect Patients with Healthcare Providers

Press Release | CognisantMD | September 29, 2020

The Ocean Platform, Canada's leading EMR-integrated digital health suite for patient engagement, is now available on apps.health, a digital health app marketplace and innovation hub from WELL Health. With this release, CognisantMD is also launching a series of powerful new tools and features for OSCAR Pro Electronic Medical Record (EMR) through its enhanced Cloud Connect API integration. Over 13,000 healthcare providers across the country use the Ocean Platform to allow Canadians to securely share health information, update their patient record, and connect with their physicians each day.

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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 Immunization Forecaster Updated to Support Pfizer COVID Vaccine

Press Release | HLN Consulting | December 16, 2020

On December 15, 2020, HLN released a new version (v1.26.2) of the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) in support of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. ICE is a state-of-the-art open source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR), and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems. Version 1.26.2 includes support for new COVID-19 Vaccine Group (with the Pfizer vaccine only). A subsequent release, coming soon, will likely add support for the Moderna vaccine. Read More »

Open Source in the Worldwide COVID-19 Response

February marks the celebration of creation of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998. OSI created the standard definition of the term Open Source that helped guide many of LPI's initiatives today. Through the past year, open source provided many opportunities to organizations to continue to work, implement their projects, and continue reaching out to communities. Here are just a few examples of how open source provides opportunities through the face of COVID-19. The COVID-19 crisis brought out all the creativity of the open source movement. In every area of innovation--open source software, open data, open collaboration, and even open equipment--companies and research institutes have addressed medical and public health needs quickly. This article highlights some of the initiatives in each area.

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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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OpenEMR Vendor Launches Digital Solution to help Healthcare Providers Meet Pandemic Challenges

Press Release | Health Tech, Inc. | May 13, 2020

Handling an influx of sick patients can be challenging at any time, but today with the Coronavirus pandemic, it becomes even more crucial to have procedures in place to manage crowded areas and maintain social distancing. To meet the increasing demands of technology for Health Clinics, Urgent Care and Private Practice, HealthTech has launched new solutions that streamline e-Prescribing and Patient Scheduling, increasing the efficiency of the way patients and healthcare providers connect.

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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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