Health Information Compliance Alert

Since the pandemic began, many systemic healthcare issues have been in the news. Among the top problems impacting the feds’ policymaking are health equity and access to quality healthcare.

Now: On Dec. 20, 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the addition of “15 digital health start-ups” to its 2022 PandemicX Accelerator cohort, which aims to thwart health inequities across the nation with IT resources, an HHS release suggests. PandemicX is spearheaded by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), and “involves using digital tools and publicly accessible data to eliminate disparities and tackle drivers of inequity exacerbated by COVID-19,” HHS says.

PandemicX, which is part of the MassChallenge Health Tech cohort, will offer start-ups four months of extensive training on a variety of curriculum and IT tools. The group will focus on myriad topics from mental health to violence prevention to social determinants of health, with a primary focus on boosting health equity and mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on healthcare.

“PandemicX will help give us interoperable tools that identify health inequities and facilitate interventions that prevent such inequities from further turning into healthcare disparities,” said ONC National Coordinator Micky Tripathi, in a release.

Read the update, which includes links to the 15 start-ups now on board the PandemicX Accelerator cohort, at www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/12/20/hhs-announces-pandemicx-accelerator-with-health-it-cohort-address-covid-19-health-disparities.html.