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The Wall Street Journal says Big Blue is pondering ways it might off-load the healthcare AI subsidiary, and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has already signaled a ''maniacal focus" on hybrid cloud development.

Greece, the UAE and Israel have also been recognised for their vaccine distribution framework. 

The vaccine which was developed by Chulalongkorn University showed promising results in prior trials with mice and monkeys. The University’s Centre of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development is utilizing new mRNA technology and its clinical testing on transgenic mice showed that the vaccine was able to prevent clinical symptoms and viremia after two shots. The university is looking to enroll 72 participants in the first phase of the human trials and subsequently increase the number to 300-600 participants in the second phase. The university has also begun research on a second-generation vaccine that will help grant additional protection to its citizens against the UK and South African variants of the COVID-19 virus. Why it matters The impact of COVID-19 has been both far-reaching and devastating, causing numerous economic and social issues. The number of undernourished individuals is estimated to be at a staggering 690 million and could even rise to 132 million by the end of the year. Both business owners, as well as global corporations, have also had to bear the brunt of this pandemic and suffered tremendous losses, with most of them being unable to carry out their usual operations. Many others are also living on tethers, with an estimated 3.3 billion of the global workforce at risk of losing their jobs. The border closures and confinement measures put in place to mitigate the spread of the virus have prevented farmers from harvesting crops and selling their produce, thus disrupting the global food supply chain and making safe, healthy diets more inaccessible. As food security is threatened globally and individuals are losing their earning power, those living in less developed nations are hit the hardest, especially those marginalized populations.  Many other countries are also seeking to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. After successfully inoculating entire Thailand, the government could potentially provide international aid by importing the vaccine to other countries.  The larger trend  As of 22 February 2021, there are currently 112,100,856 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,480,686 deaths. However, there is still light at the end of the tunnel as the number of newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases has declined by 16 percent worldwide over the past week despite having more virulent strains of the virus break out in multiple regions. Additionally, the number of global deaths over the past week has also shown a reduction by 10 percent.  On the record “The two-dose vaccine will be administered three weeks apart and will be enlisted for a rolling review with the Thai drug regulator,” Kiat Ruxrungtham, head researcher at Chulalongkorn University’s Centre of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development stated.  “By year-end we should have a production capacity of 1 to 5 million doses annually,” Kiat added, hinting that this number could later rise to about 20 million doses per year.

Amidst an ever-changing landscape, it’s prudent for healthcare organizations to keep pace with healthcare innovations and reap their benefits. From processing genome information quickly to storing large amounts of information and enabling global collaboration, Amazon Web Services (AWS) seeks to provide essential support to healthcare professionals so they are better equipped to discover and work together to help saves lives around the world. These benefits, which the AWS brings about, fit into five main classifications: functionality, community, security, pace of innovation, and operational expertise.  Functionality With AWS, you can store huge amounts of healthcare information. Amazon Redshift is an example of a support system that you can use in conjunction with DNA sequencing machines. This allows for the storage of more than 10 petabytes of genomics data. The AWS Cloud system also enables you to run other software on it for enhanced performance, allowing your infrastructure to process and analyze large genomic datasets. This significantly sped up operations within healthcare organizations, reducing the time taken to interpret a genome from 12 weeks to two hours.  Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) hastens the speed of a genomics dataset, which in turn greatly reduces the cost of sequencing a single genome. This swift turnaround time has also aided in accelerating research and diagnosis of leukemia, potentially helping to save dozens of lives.  Pace of innovation AWS is also equipped with video streaming capabilities such as Amazon Kinesis Video Streams, which allows the streaming of videos from accessible technologies such as webcams and mobile devices. You can subsequently stream these videos to Amazon Rekognition then use them to help detect facial positions in unborn babies or help better comprehend brain-related issues and more. AWS Lambda functions consume raw data from Kinesis Video Streams then help to analyze and mathematically compute attention and body motion metrics. You can then retrieve this processed information and use the metrics to visualize anomalies or provide alerts when detected.  Community In addition to being able to enhance workflows within an organization, AWS can have more far-reaching effects to help customers on both local and international fronts. Being able to facilitate the flow of both healthcare information and expertise around the world is also vital in the healthcare industry. Cerner, a leading supplier of health information technology solutions, is one of the many organizations that leverage AWS’s global reach and services. The AWS Cloud community creates a diverse virtual meeting space whereby innovators across different industries can gather to share their experiences and ideas and collaborate to solve healthcare-related issues. The Genome Institute of Singapore uses genomic technology for research to improve human health. Researchers using AWS across labs has been vital in helping to store data, reduce the occurrences of human error, and enable faster processing applications. When faced with a pandemic, such as COVID-19, this helps organizations cater to the healthcare needs of specific individuals as well as address infectious outbreaks. Then, the government can put in place preventive measures to save more lives.  Security Ensuring that patient data remains protected is also a top priority. Fabric Genomics, a software genomics company, relies on AWS security and encryption technologies to help safeguard this information. By using AWS, Fabric Genomics has enhanced security, which allows them to comply with strict patient health information data-protection requirements.  Operational expertise In India, the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence is an independent, nonprofit research and global hub seeking to develop artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the betterment of social issues. Using AWS helped them process sensitive government data securely while building multiple solutions for more widespread societal problems. For example, the customer is looking to develop an AI solution to address the high infant mortality rates within the country. By taking a photo or video of the baby with their mobile phones, users can leverage the AI solution to create a virtual 3D model of the infant and calculate the baby’s weight, along with other crucial measurements. They can then put interventions in place early to help lower infant mortality rates.  With its sights firmly set on building a global cloud infrastructure through innovation, AWS has a slew of resources and technologies ready to take on more demanding workloads. We can help facilitate faster processing of larger data volumes while making sure that you can do so in a secure cloud environment anywhere on the planet.  

ARIA will be used to quickly identify and fund transformational science and technology.

A report, from centre-right think-tank Reform, highlights the urgent action needed to address England’s backlog of non-COVID-related procedures that were put on hold during the pandemic.

The group of high school students has spent nearly two years working on an app aimed at making it easier for patients to find clinical trials related to their health conditions.

The Department of Justice described the case as involving one of the "largest healthcare fraud schemes in United States history."