Tag: Canada

Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) aim to empower public sector organizations to quickly create and test new ideas using Amazon’s innovation methodology. With the CIC program, students and researchers, along with AWS teams, focus on solving real-life societal challenges facing the public sector. Learn more about some of the digital solutions on challenges the CIC team published over the last quarter such as working to prevent opioid overdose, discovering new coronaviruses, and using machine learning to monitor beehive health.

I recently had the opportunity to record the keynote for this year’s AWS Public Sector Summit Online. This year’s keynote theme is “Inspiration Everywhere,” and I can’t wait to share a number of inspiring stories and examples from our customers with you when the keynote airs on April 15. What unites all of the stories is a commitment to achieving mission outcomes with AWS and cloud computing. And while we’ll spend some time talking about the technology, I’ll also share with you the organizational changes that mission owners can drive, today, to move fast, be responsive, and maximize the impact of limited resources.

As populations continue to grow, government departments around the world are exploring new ways to scale their delivery of client services. The Public Services Health & Safety Association (PSHSA), a transfer payment agency of the Ontario government’s Ministry of Labour Training and Skills Development, turned to an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot to better serve customers by addressing their occupational health and safety training and consulting questions.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information (NLCHI) provides quality information to health professionals, the public, researchers, and health system decision makers. Through collaboration with the health system, NLCHI supports the development of data and technical standards, maintains key health databases, carries out analytics and evaluation, and supports health research. This post details how NLCHI is able to provide secure and scalable access to their on-premises provincial electronic health record (EHR) system, by trusted and authorized partners who run on AWS, through the use of AWS PrivateLink, Network Load Balancer, and AWS Site-to-Site VPN.

AlayaCare, a Canada-based health technology organization founded in 2014, offers a platform for home and community care organizations. The cloud-based platform provides an end-to-end solution for care providers, including back office functionality, client and family portals, remote patient monitoring, and mobile care worker functionality. AlayaCare aims to help care providers by arming them with the technology and data insights they need to deliver personalized care. Using AWS, AlayaCare is building their vision of the future of in-home and virtual care.

The Government of Canada (GC) set ambitious goals at the onset of COVID-19. One goal: to offer a mobile app to notify its users of possible exposures before symptoms appear in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize their privacy. In July, the GC released the COVID Alert app, an exposure notification application. COVID Alert doesn’t require users to enter—nor does it obtain from the mobile device—any personally identifiable information (PII) and doesn’t use location tracking. Let’s take a look at COVID Alert app’s cloud-based architecture and how the app is helping slow the spread of COVID-19, and helping keep Canadians safe while protecting privacy.

Governments at all levels rapidly addressed the rising challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian governments  met citizens’ needs quickly by building secure, compliant solutions on AWS to deliver critical information and services. Working with partners and AWS, Canadian governments and agencies released multiple solutions for providing a modern, digital-first experience for all to interact with the government and receive the information and services they need.

Telehealth solutions make virtual, real-time interactions between patient and provider possible. These solutions can be beneficial for both patients and care providers, letting patients receive care without having to step into a doctor’s office—a key feature that has benefits for those in hard-to-reach or rural areas and patients with mobility issues. Additionally, these solutions can help reduce physical traffic in hospitals, which is imperative during the pandemic. Customers around the globe share how building on AWS, helps them scale, innovate, and operate at scale to improve the patient and care provider experience.

In July and August on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Fix This podcast, we heard from customers on their solutions for the classroom, in diagnostic research, for working from home, and in the great outdoors.

In June, Amazon Web Services (AWS) piloted AWS DigiHealth, an educational program designed for healthcare professionals in IT, digital health, and healthcare delivery to learn about cloud computing concepts. The program teaches participants about the value of the cloud, shares examples of how the cloud can be applied in healthcare, and reviews applicable available services through AWS. The pilot was eligible for working professionals in the health care sector who were interested in learning how the cloud can help them transform their organization and spur innovation.