Health and Human Services

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.

Hawaii’s new portal, launched by the Department of Human Services, brings new technology into the process of connecting foster kids to caregivers, making the process faster and easier.

Federal COVID-19 relief funds will cover the cost of unlimited mental health consultations and 12 counseling sessions a year for community college students in the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system.

State records show that Oregon is thinking about adopting a digital passport that can allow citizens to show proof of vaccination easily. However, the state doesn't know what kind of technology would be employed.