CHOC has been selected for a new global program from Amazon Web Services (AWS), supporting organizations that are developing solutions to advance health equity. AWS is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering features such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics.
Through the program, AWS offers credits and customized technical expertise to selected organizations around the world that want to use AWS services to improve health outcomes and health equity in any of the following areas: increasing access to health services for underserved communities; addressing social determinants of health; and leveraging data to promote more equitable and inclusive systems of care.
CHOC’s partnership with AWS includes $130,000 in grants toward technical, computational and storage resources to assist with capturing social determinant data into CHOC’s data science platform from publicly available data sources. CHOC is also working towards also incorporating Orange County school data into the platform.
This year, CHOC is ramping up efforts to improve the exchange of data between the enterprise and O.C. schools. “Schools spend a lot of time creating individualized education plans based on certain students’ disabilities and needs, and they need information from the pediatric healthcare community, both from primary doctors and specialists,” says Dr. Michael Weiss, vice president of population health at CHOC.
Dr. Weiss partnered with Dr. William Feaster, vice president and chief health information officer at CHOC, to apply for this grant from AWS’ health equity program. “We are proud to receive this support from Amazon to help us improve health equity and advance our data science program” says Dr. Feaster. “AWS is an innovative addition to our team that helps us further our mission at CHOC.”
“AWS believes individual health outcomes should not depend on socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or neighborhood,” says Maggie Carter, Global Lead, Social Impact at AWS. “Cloud technology can be a force multiplier when it comes to addressing the inequities in global health that have been amplified by the pandemic. Through this program, we look forward to helping CHOC and other organizations worldwide use AWS to advance health equity and improve health outcomes.”
To learn more about the AWS program, visit aws.amazon.com/health/health-equity.
