Tag: Government & Policy

The security firm Mandiant Intelligence has raised the alarm about FIN12, the threat actor behind ransomware attacks disproportionately affecting the healthcare sector.   Mandiant characterized FIN12 as “aggressive” and “financially motivated,” specializing in ransomware deployment while relying on other bad actors to gain access to victims.   “FIN12’s operations provide illustration that no target is

The Kingdom of Bahrain is set to launch a national digital platform aimed at serving health facilities, it has emerged. The yet-to-be-named online hub – which will reportedly be accessible via nhra.bh.munshaat – will fall under the Gulf country’s National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA), and is due to launch later on this year. “This system

The ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft will team up with the White House to make free rides to COVID-19 vaccination sites free through July 4.   According to White House senior advisor Andy Slavitt, beginning shortly, the companies will start to offer free rides to 80,000 vaccination sites for the next two months.   Reporting from

Major health tech bodies have collaborated on a global campaign to showcase the talents of 100 of the UK’s most innovative and impactful digital health innovators. The First 100 list features UK companies with a proven track record of benefiting the lives of healthcare professionals and patients in the NHS and private health sector. They include companies

NHS England plans to create a new transformation directorate which will incorporate NHSX, according to HSJ. The new body would bring together digital and operational improvement teams within NHS England and NHS Improvement, with the aim of continuing the rapid transformation achieved during the COVID-19 crisis, HSJ [paywall] reports. It adds that four specialities have

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that electronic health record vendor athenahealth had agreed to pay $18.25 million to resolve False Claims Act violation allegations. The federal government alleged that the company had paid illegal kickbacks – including inviting prospects and customers to all-expense-paid sporting and entertainment events – to generate sales of its

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the UK will offer its genomics expertise to other countries in order to help them identify new variants of COVID-19. This will be facilitated through the launch of the New Variant Assessment Platform, a UK-based service that will offer up the country’s laboratories to analyse samples of potential

The KidneyX Artificial Kidney Prize, designed to accelerate the development of artificial kidneys toward human trials, is now open for submissions.   Leaders from Luminary Labs, the consultancy that designed and produced the prize, said it represents the ways that the government can promote innovation through public-private partnerships such as KidneyX, which is a collaboration

Tpen for the next 30 days, through December 7. WHY IT MATTERS The Connected Care Pilot Program, first formalized on March 31, 2020, is open to nonprofit and public eligible healthcare providers nationwide. The program will use Universal Service Fund cash over three years to help defray connected care costs for selected providers, good for

Data released this past week from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that more than 34.5 million services were delivered via telehealth in Medicare and in the Children’s Health Insurance Program from March through June. Although the agency notes there is always a “claims lag” between the time a service occurs and when

Global health leaders discussed the challenges of climate change and widening inequality during the closing keynote sssion, ‘Climate Change, Social Determinants of Health: Leading Recovery and Preparing for the Future’. The speakers were Prof Jan Semenza, lead of the Health Determinants Programme, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Sweden, Prof Sam Shah, founder &

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs notified its beneficiaries on Monday that a data breach has exposed the personal information of approximately 46,000 veterans. According to the VA’s Office of Management, an online application used by the agency’s Financial Services Center was accessed by unauthorized users in an attempt to divert payments to community care

Healthcare industry groups have been chewing on the challenge of accurate patient matching for years, with the prospect of patient misidentification presenting questions around safety and security even as the importance of data sharing becomes more apparent.   And the COVID-19 crisis, said industry group representatives at a working session convened by the Office of

In a letter sent to Sen. John Boozman, R-Arkansas, chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert L. Wilkie said the COVID-19 pandemic “has shifted the overall priorities” of the VA – and that the department would delay its ongoing EHR modernization as a result. “Our

Germany’s recent Digital Care Act is set to bring new opportunities for the biggest healthcare market in Europe to accelerate efforts to digitise and innovate.  Below, Dr Jens Baas [pictured on the right], CEO of one of the country’s largest statutory health insurers, Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), tells us what it means. This interview has been edited for clarity. Healthcare

Change on many levels urgently required: This was the message brought forward at the Health 2019 conference of HIMSS and Handelsblatt in Berlin. Innovation-prone digital leaders from all over the world showed that healthcare transformation is doable and success measurable. “Healthcare is moving beyond disease towards preserving health, it is moving beyond hospitals towards community-based

Japan’s healthcare system shares a couple of similarities with the UK’s. Both countries provide universal healthcare, and both are now grappling with the challenges posed by ageing populations. According to a report published today, that trend is also creating new opportunities for collaboration. WHY IT MATTERS In 2018, citizens aged 65 and over accounted for 28% of

The Federal Health Architecture and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT ended federal support for the decade-old CONNECT data exchange project on September 6. WHY IT MATTERS CONNECT is an open source software and community project, jointly developed 10 years ago by FHA and ONC as another way to harness the expertise

Earlier this week, the Western Australia (WA) Government announced the establishment of a new Ministerial Council that will advise the State Government on opportunities to further develop and support precision health advances. Precision health uses new and emerging technologies to enhance disease prevention and early detection, and improve patient outcomes through treatments tailored to patients’

Interoperability is at an intriguing intersection right now. In one corner are the people suggesting that despite some $35 billion and 10 years of work since the HITECH Act under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act kicked off the widespread digitization of healthcare very little actual progress has been achieved in terms of making data