Agency Spotlight: Health and Human Services

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been in the spotlight like never before with their critical role in managing the pandemic. While there is a lot of work still to be done on that front, other critical efforts are taking place across HHS agencies that will have an incredible impact on the health and well-being of citizens.

Data Sharing

The necessity of sharing data to understand and respond to the pandemic spawned a host of new applications and a new openness to data sharing across HHS as well as governmentwide. The first major HHS data sharing platform was launched in April 2020. Named HHS Protect, this platform provided visibility into more than four billion data elements from 225 sources providing intelligence on rates of infection and hospitalizations. HHS is committed to expanding its use and sharing of data in all areas of its mission with programs including the Data Optimization Initiative, Administration for Children and Families Data Sharing Solutions, and the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA).

Preventing Fraud

Also, in the spirit of sharing, HHS is looking at a cohesive use of AI across the department with an AI office that can feed innovation into all of the agencies. In doing so, HHS can address some of the unique challenges of the health sector including having to deal with the fact that some data is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It can also support the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) efforts to evolve their fraud-detection platform using Machine Learning (ML). The current platform is supervised by humans and is able to identify suspicious behavior from insurance agents and brokers. CMS wants to automate this solution further into an unsupervised model that can reduce the time it takes to spot and respond to fraud.

Grants Management

HHS was named the home for the Grants Management Quality Service Management Office (QSMO), the government's new model of shared services. Already the home to the Grants.gov portal, HHS is working to staff up an organization to support the improvement of service quality for grant applicants, recipients and federal agencies.

A Model of Modernization

HHS is one of the first Departments to comply with the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract, vehicle agencies are mandated to transition to by May 2023. HHS was an early adopter, awarding their contract in August of 2020. It consolidated 11 contracts covering its technology and telecommunications needs into a single $2.5 billion award. With this award, HHS is projected to save $700 million. The ability of HHS to move to this modern contract approach speaks to the department's acquisition flexibility and capabilities.

GovEvents and GovWhitePapers feature a number of events and resources that address these areas as well as other topics germane to HHS.

• Solving Public Sector Health Challenges with AI (March 9, 2022; webcast) - Learn how government agencies such as VA, DHA, and State Government health organizations are helping solve some of our nation's most critical health-related issues such as providing benefits services to veterans, spouses, and survivors; delivering medical services to our forward-deployed soldiers; ensuring food and drug safety; and monitoring for healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse.
• HIMSS 22 (March 14-18, 2022; Orlando, FL and online) - Professionals throughout the global health ecosystem connect for the education, innovation and collaboration they need to reimagine health and wellness for everyone, everywhere. Healthcare professionals attend this influential conference and trade show year after year to get the information and solutions they need to reimagine health and wellness for everyone, everywhere.
• Infrastructure Series: Health IT (March 31, 2022; virtual) - Health IT advances are improving both patient care and the management of public health. Plus, IT modernization initiatives across government are leading to improvement in the delivery of services for remote access, medical devices, EHRs, telehealth and more. All these innovations begin with a solid infrastructure for interoperability, data management, cloud computing and more.
• AI in Reg Tech (April 21-22, 2022; New York, NY) - Discover how AI & machine learning are impacting regulatory processes from leading innovations across industry, research and regulatory bodies.
• Culture, Communication, and Capabilities: Preparing Federal Agencies to be AI Ready (white paper) - Federal agencies have become keenly interested in understanding how to prepare their workforces to fulfill the potential of leveraging Artificial Intelligence-based technologies. In a roundtable hosted by ATARC, an esteemed group of experts in data, technology, and human resources from a series of federal agencies explored what needs to be done to get the federal workforce "Artificial Intelligence (AI) ready" and to share best practices.
• Leveraging the Federal Data Strategy (eBook) - The fourth Industrial Revolution is here and with it a technological landscape, which is fundamentally altering the way we live, work and relate to one another. With new technologies merging the interrelationship between the physical, digital and biological worlds, and "thinking machines" replacing human tasks and jobs, the skills that organizations need in the workforce for the future are changing.

Check out more events and resources at GovEvents.com and GovWhitePapers.com.