Health and Human Services

The funding will be used to purchase telehealth equipment and software licenses to increase access to care and services for CentraCare Health Systems in St. Cloud, Minn., according to a press release.

The external relations director of the Oregon Department of Administrative Services accidentally emailed the private vaccination statuses of about 40,000 state employees to different news outlets.

County officials approved a $175,000 consulting contract to develop a strategic plan to expand broadband accessibility. Thousands of residents are without access to high-speed Internet service.

Visitors from California, Hawaii, Louisiana and Virginia will now be able to show proof of their COVID-19 vaccination status through New York's Excelsior Pass. The pass will soon accept proof from Washington state as well.

According to California health officials and advocates, disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines on social media and some news outlets is a major cause of vaccine hesitancy and fear.

Various experts have suggested that states should spend opioid settlement dollars on data-focused technology. So far, states have been quiet on possible tech investments, citing other steps that must be taken first.

Bandwidth, a popular voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) company based in Raleigh, N.C., has dealt with outages over the last few days due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

As part of a $500,000 pilot program, Sacramento, Calif., will install 100 air quality monitors in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Such areas tend to have worse air quality than their counterparts.

Last spring, Arizona State University began offering a course that teaches students the essentials of coding so that they can develop mobile apps that direct low-income and homeless populations to support services.

Naperville, Ill., rolled out a text-to-911 option this week. Officials advise citizens to only use the service if a phone call can't be made. No pictures or videos can be delivered with the service at this time.

A health-care company in Monroe County, Mich., suffered a sophisticated ransomware attack in July. Although there was concern that hackers could have compromised medical data, only financial info was affected.

Doctors at the UMass Memorial Medical Center have employed a new assistant on different surgeries: the Single-Port DaVinci robot. The robot is able to make much smaller incisions, which helps with recovery.

Rather than follow the trend of vaccination passports or cards, Virginia has opted to utilize QR codes to help citizens show others that they have been inoculated against COVID-19.

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said yesterday that the personal data of most Alaskans could have been compromised by a May cyber attack. In response, the state is offering free credit monitoring.

The Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services has implemented a fleet management software to monitor its vehicles. The cloud-based technology helps the agency oversee critical operations from any location.

By using telehealth and collaborating with the Cleveland Clinic, Akron’s EMTs and paramedics can now let patients talk to a physician before they make the trip to the emergency room, getting them care faster.

Late last month, a class-action action lawsuit was filed against St. Joseph's/Candler Hospital Health System, which suffered a ransomware attack that could have exposed the data of more than a million people.

North Carolina was one of many states to release a contact tracing app during the pandemic. However, the state’s app, SlowCOVIDNC, hasn’t led to any meaningful results in terms of public health.