The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), has awarded a $41.9 million contract for 49 Health Center Controlled Networks (HCCNs) to expand health information technology. […]
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a July 15 letter to keep telework policies in place, and argued that reducing allowed telework could be a factor in many employees deciding to leave the department. […]
Federal agencies are unprepared to confront and mitigate cyberthreats today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affair Committee Investigations Subcommittee determined in a report released today, recommending that agencies give CIOs more authority to make decisions on cybersecurity. […]
As of April, 209,000 Americans have volunteered to provide their personal health data for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program to build a national research cohort of over 1 million participants that will help drive the Precision Medicine Initiative. But those participants may have placed their data at risk. […]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) a multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with a total value of $49 million over a five-year base period to provide AI technologies through HHS’ Program Support Center. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has appointed Jose Arrieta CIO. He was associate deputy secretary of acquisition at HHS. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Energy, Veterans Affairs (VA), U.S. Army, and U.S. Navy inappropriately awarded 1,849 contracts to businesses that had tax debts in 2015 and 2016. […]
To make cybersecurity more effective in Federal healthcare, security professionals need to bring a broad swath of folks to the table to build security into technology from the beginning while still enabling the mission, said a panel of Federal chief information security officers and cybersecurity leaders at ACT-IAC’s Health Security, Privacy, and Practice Forum on April 23. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today critiqued the lack of IT interoperability, among other shortfalls, in the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service (IHS) memorandum of understanding (MOU) to improve healthcare for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) veterans. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) FISMA (Federal Information Security Modernization Act) audit for fiscal year 2018, released today by HHS’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG), shows the agency improved its performance in the “Identify” and “Protect” areas of the framework, while holding steady in other areas. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Digital Service (USDS) are teaming up to determine a new way to hire IT talent for Federal positions. […]
While the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) signed into law by President Obama in 2016 has as its main mission “to help accelerate medical product development and bring new innovations and advances to patients who need them faster and more efficiently,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to emphasize accelerating the flow of information between the healthcare provider and the patient. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is testing the use of blockchain technology to track unaccompanied minors when they enter Federal custody, said an HHS official on Thursday. […]
Officials from various Federal agencies are focusing on data-driven approaches, utilizing blockchain, and business-focused functions to brace for a digital future. […]
Security controls across eight Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) operating divisions (OPDIVs) need improvement to better detect and counter cyberattacks, the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a report issued today. […]
On Thursday, the U.S. government released its Fourth U.S. Action Plan for Open Government that will work to making Federal government data more accessible, ensuring the grant-making process is more accountable, and Federally funded scientific research is more accessible. […]
In a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) blog post, released Thursday, the HHS Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) announced that they have completed a 14-week pilot program that sought to “improve clinical trials, experimental therapies, and data-driven solutions” for challenges stemming from cancer, Lyme disease, and other tick-borne diseases using Federal data and artificial intelligence (AI). […]
The Program Support Center (PSC), a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, issued a request for proposals on Thursday to procure Intelligent Automation/Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) solutions services and products. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week released its Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices, a set of voluntary cybersecurity guidelines for the private sector that leverages the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework to address cybersecurity issues across healthcare organizations of all sizes. […]
Senior officials from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discussed how the new HHS Accelerate blockchain, the first blockchain to receive an authority to operate (ATO), can help the department improve acquisitions through greater visibility during Sunday’s episode of Government Matters. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services on Nov. 28 issued a draft strategy that the agency said is “designed to help reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on clinicians” stemming from use of health information technologies including electronic health records. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on Monday, calling for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to improve its approach to cybersecurity for medical devices already on the market, and praising FDA’s early response to the report’s criticisms. […]
Health insurance provider Anthem has agreed to pay the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR) $16 million to settle what HHS called “potential violations” of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in connection with an Anthem data breach in late 2014 and early 2015 in which cyber criminals stole data on nearly 79 million individuals including names, Social Security numbers, medical identification numbers, and email addresses, among others. […]
A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) CTO calls out the department and its individual agencies for keeping their data in silos, and calls for a department-wide data governance framework. […]
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recommended in a new report that the Food and Drug Administration pay even more attention to medical device cybersecurity during the process in which it evaluates products for approval to market in the U.S. […]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said today it awarded $225 million of contracts to three companies to help the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) improve its medical review tools. […]
Beth Killoran, CIO of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since November 2015, has left the position for a new role at the Office of the Surgeon General, and CTO Ed Simcox has been named acting CIO, an HHS official confirmed to MeriTalk. […]
The state of Maryland is not properly securing Medicaid data and information systems, according to a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) report released today that found “numerous significant system vulnerabilities” in the state’s IT systems. […]
MeriTalk today announced the winners of its inaugural FITARA Awards program, recognizing six Federal agencies who have made tremendous strides in modernizing their IT environments and one congressional leader who has worked tirelessly to promote the reform of IT acquisitions and adoption of cyber best practices. […]
Obstacles to data sharing are holding back the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) in Federal agencies. However, the use cases and potential of AI makes it worth the struggle, according to experts. […]