All lives truly matter. However, the world does not exist in a vacuum void of institutional racism, subconscious, and implicit bias. As a result, every life within America is not valued the same, as is evident by the recent George Floyd murder. When all lives are not treated with the same opportunities and respect, whether in matters of criminal justice, employment, housing, education, health, and healthcare evidence shows the result is that only some lives actually matter. One cannot change the
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Public Health
Verily Launches Healthy at Work Program for COVID-19 Screening & Testing
What You Should Know:
- Verily launches Healthy at Work Program providing
ongoing COVID-19 screening and testing for a healthy return to work and school
to communities across the nation.
- The Healthy at Work program combines symptom screening, testing services, and data analytics. Employees, students, or others designated to participate in the program can use the online interface to record health symptoms each day.
Today, Verily, an Alphabet
company, has announced a new Healthy at
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How Social Determinants of Health Will Impact the Future of Benefit Coverages
Do you have access to healthy foods, transportation to a doctor, high-speed internet for telemed appointments, or a roof over your head? These are assumptions that most of us take for granted, and are not the questions that insurers usually take into consideration. But, as they look to increase member outcomes and foster long-term customer loyalty, considering the changing needs of many consumers in the face of today’s current affairs, it’s time they did.
In fact, forward-looking health plans
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Unite Us Acquires SDoH Data Analytics Company Staple Health to Expand Capabilities
What You Should Know:
- Unite Us acquires social determinants of health (SDoH)
analytics company Staple Health to greatly expand its valuable predictive data
analytics capabilities.
- Predictive analytics and outcome data are essential as
Unite Us supports local communities, addressing needs and providing proactive
social care infrastructure where it is lacking.
- The acquisition of Staple Health brings 10 years of
data experience and a database of 270M individuals, with notable
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Using HIEs to Prepopulate Forms Improves Public Health Disease Reporting, Study Finds
What You Should Know:
- A new study from Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University shows that using electronic health information exchanges (HIE) to prepopulate forms for notifiable disease reports increases reporting and completeness of information.
- The system extracts data from the Indiana Health Information Exchange and fills in the information fields on the official state reporting form.
- The form is delivered to an ambulatory care clinic using the HIE network, acting as a
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Redox, Curative Partner to Connect COVID-19 Test Results to Public Health Depts.
What You Should Know:
- Curative and Redox have found a way to easily send COVID-19 test results to state officials for reporting, contact tracing programs, and to inform policies as regions move through phases for re-opening the economy.
- Since formalizing the partnership in May, the duo has kicked off projects with 24 states, with two, Illinois and Delaware, now fully live.
- In this novel use case, Curative uses the Redox API to allow for a secure, efficient flow of data between
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Carequality Releases Implementation Guide for Electronic Case Reporting
What You Should Know:
- Carequality releases an implementation guide for electronic case reporting that enables automated, electronic case reporting to public health agencies, including the CDC.
- Carequality worked closely with the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) in developing the new implementation guide.
- This is Carequality’s second implementation guide, the first being the Query-Based Document Exchange Implementation Guide, which was originally adopted in 2015
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Fitbit Unveils FDA-Approved Low-Cost Emergency Ventilator to Address COVID-19 Pandemic
What You Should Know:
- Today, Fitbit announced that it has received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA for a new emergency ventilator named Fitbit Flow to help respond to the COVID-19 global health crisis.
- Fitbit plans to make the design available via open-source software to promote further collaboration and reach more people across the globe.
- Fitbit’s R&D, engineering and design teams worked quickly to apply their collective expertise in advanced sensor
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PE Firm Rubicon Technology Partners Acquires Central Logic – M&A
What You Should Know:
- Private equity firm Rubicon Technology Partners acquires Central Logic, a provider of patient orchestration and tools to accelerate access to care for healthcare organizations.
- Rubicon will be aggressively driving Central Logic’s growth with additional cash investments into the business, with a focus on product innovation, sales expansion, delivery and customer support, and the pursuit of acquisition opportunities.
Rubicon Technology Partners,
a Boulder,
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Google Awards Morehouse School of Medicine $1M to Study Racial Impact of COVID-19
What You Should Know:
- Google awards a $1M grant to Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine to study the racial impact of COVID-19 and address racial disparities.
- The partnership will enable the real-time COVID-19 collection and study of detailed demographic data about the communities of color that are being hit hardest by the pandemic.
The research project will help policymakers better understand how to ensure those communities receive the targeted help
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