Tag: HHS

State and local governments and health and human services (HHS) agencies provide key services to the nation’s most vulnerable and at risk populations such as healthcare, nutrition, economic, and other social support programs. HHS organizations were among the first to feel the impact of COVID-19 and its effects continue to linger and test aging infrastructure and limited technology systems. State and local government agencies made mission critical decisions to address those immediate needs and are preparing for resiliency moving forward. For this, they turned to the cloud. To help organizations discover how the cloud can help, Amazon Web Services (AWS) created the Health and Human Services Cloud Pavilion, an online, interactive learning environment.

As technology makes it easier to connect with constituents, state and local governments are looking to build systems centered around and empowered by the citizen experience. This is especially the case with health and social services agencies. Public health systems often struggle to connect data across agencies and systems—leaving some communities without the insights they need to optimally allocate resources or to take action in the face of emerging epidemics. In a keynote address to over 800 government health IT leaders, Taha Kass-Hout, senior leader of healthcare and artificial intelligence at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said, “It’s not for a lack of technology, and it’s not for a lack of passion. It’s about the difficulty alleviating the heavy lifting that leaves agencies extremely resource constrained.”

The recent Winter Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, showcased a breakthrough Sundance documentary, Dying in Vein. Its filmmaker, Jenny Mackenzie, joined a panel of public health and technology leaders, including Dr. Bill Hazel, former Secretary of Health and Human Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Alex Chan, CEO of the Clinton Foundation Health Initiative, to discuss opiate and heroin addiction, which, as the film highlights, claims an average of 90 lives in the U.S. daily. A prevailing theme that emerged cast the opioid epidemic as an issue of public health – rather than one of criminal justice – and pressed the role of technology in mitigating its risks.

When the team at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wanted help addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic, they decided to do something simple – invite in the country’s brightest minds and give them API-enabled, up-to-date data.

Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies collect an endless amount of data that, however abundant, often fails to paint the whole picture. According to NextGov, 74 million Medicaid records are now hosted in the AWS Cloud. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is porting in five years or more of records from 50 states—totaling 72 […]

The best predictor of future safety is a thorough understanding of the past. Traverse, a protective services case discovery platform from the AWS Public Sector Partner Program member Northwoods, uncovers dark data and uses it to present a comprehensive case story. It allows child and adult protective services agencies to leverage the power of big […]

Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies collect endless amounts of data that, however abundant, often fails to paint the whole picture. Now, through the use of data lakes, healthcare agencies across the world are connecting disparate datasets, connecting information, and drawing new insights from years of data. HHS is in the midst of a digital […]

From minor regulatory adjustments to landmark reforms, state and local Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies are constantly adapting to changing requirements to provide vital benefits for the citizens they serve. Policy changes or initiatives to improve social and clinical outcomes often require a modernization of systems to manage eligibility determination, benefits enrollment, claims adjudication, […]