Tag: health

The advent of cloud technology, coupled with advances in fields like epidemiology, genomics, and data analytics, has led to transformational change in how we use data in health. These developments enable a data-driven approach in individual care, public health, and health-related research.

US schools are doing their best to support students, but with staffing shortages and additional challenges exacerbated by the widespread disruption in teaching and learning, the education community needs solutions to help with recovery. Students also need help available to them when they need it, and that may not fall within the hours of the school day. AWS Partner, Gaggle, is an education technology (EdTech) company that delivers solutions that focus on helping to keep students safe. Gaggle developed ReachOut, a mental health hotline built on AWS that connects K12 students to trained Gaggle support counselors, anywhere, anytime.

Supporting and protecting the healthcare workforce is an essential investment in the continuity of health services. That’s why AWS is choosing to focus on training, retaining, and deploying healthcare workers with the launch of a new AWS Healthcare Accelerator. This is AWS’s first ever global healthcare cohort focused on workforce development.

eVisit’s role as a participant in the AWS Health Equity Initiative provided me with the opportunity to serve as a panelist at this year’s AWS Summit Washington, DC in May. I presented alongside other AWS health equity program partners to outline our collective efforts to increase access to healthcare services in underserved communities, reduce disparities by addressing social determinants of health (SDoH), and leverage data to promote equitable systems of care.

At AWS, we believe the cloud can help address long-standing social and structural disparities that impact health outcomes. That’s why we have chosen to focus the next AWS Healthcare Accelerator on health equity. Launching today, this accelerator builds on our larger focus on this issue that includes a $40M commitment we made last September to support customers developing solutions to reduce health inequities. The AWS Healthcare Accelerator, delivered in collaboration with KidsX, aims to empower all startups that focus on improving health equity.

Nursing shortages are not a new phenomenon, but the pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The situation has forced hospitals to think creatively about their staffing models and has also brought clinical teams, operators, and IT departments together in an effort to seek new ways to use technology. One healthcare system is using robotics powered by cloud technology, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), to help nurses spend more time with patients.

Today marks World Health Day, and this year’s theme is “Our planet, our health.” The World Health Organization (WHO) is using this day to drive global attention to the urgent actions needed to protect our planet and prioritize well-being in societies, and supporting these efforts is core to our principles and values at AWS. We’re proud to support our customers and partners who are solving some of society’s biggest problems with the cloud to make these ideas and changes a reality. Here are just a few examples of how our customers are leveraging AWS technology to innovate for our planet and our health.

It takes a medical village to discover and diagnose rare diseases. The National Institutes of Health’s Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) is made up of a coordinating center, 12 clinical sites, a model organism screening center, a metabolomics core, a sequencing core, and a biorepository. For many years prior to the UDN, the experts at these sites were limited by antiquated data-sharing procedures. The UDN leadership realized that if they wanted to scale up and serve as many patients as possible, they needed to transform how they process, store, and share medical data—which led the UDN to the AWS Cloud.

Maryland Transportation Institute (MTI), an interdisciplinary research and education organization based out of the University of Maryland, focuses on solving complex transportation problems. When COVID-19 hit, MTI was presented with an urgent new problem: the organization was tasked with gathering, processing, and reporting daily transportation data from nearly 65% of the US population. To keep the public safe, they needed more computing power—quickly. They used the AWS Cloud.

For more than 150 years, Children’s National Hospital has worked to bring health and well-being to children around the world. Today, it is among the nation’s top 10 children’s hospitals and is transforming pediatric medicine for all children. Recently, the hospital opened the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus (CNRIC). Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to help launch this one-of-a-kind hub for pediatric medical discovery, innovation, and care.