• Connecticut: Connecticut is launching a new student loan repayment program for healthcare workers. The program includes $13.5 million in federal funding and is designed to combat worker shortages and burnout following the pandemic. "Nurses are still working around the clock, and a lot of worries about mandatory overtime, and a lot of nurses wondering whether you're going to stay in the profession or not," Governor Ned Lamont (D) said. To apply for the program, a provider will need to commit to work or already be working in a designated area of need in the state for two years. After two years, full-time providers will receive $50,000 for loan repayment, and part-time providers will receive $25,000. According to Larry Slater, a professor and dean at the Quinnipiac School of Nursing, the program will benefit students, healthcare professionals, and patients. "This will really kind of balance the scales, and allow us to really get practitioners into our rural environments, or underserved environments in the state of Connecticut to really address the primary care needs of our citizens," Slater said. (Caffrey, NBC Connecticut, 5/20)
• Georgia/Michigan: A second human case of bird flu connected to the current H5N1 outbreak in cattle has been identified in a dairy farm worker in Michigan, but health officials say the risk to the public remains low and that there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the disease. In response to the current bird flu outbreak, CDC has asked local and state health officials maintain their flu surveillance operations at peak-season levels during the summer to identify any signs of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus. In addition to maintaining flu surveillance throughout the summer, CDC and others are detecting influenza A viruses in wastewater to determine where the H5N1 virus, a type of influenza A virus, could be spreading. (Branswell, STAT, 5/21; Reed, Axios, 5/22)
• Wisconsin: Epic has launched an open-source tool to help healthcare providers test and validate artificial intelligence (AI) models. The tool, which is called the AI Trust and Assurance Suite, is available for free through the public coding website GitHub. Health systems can use the tool to evaluate the performance of AI models that integrate with any EHR system, not just those from Epic. "This tool is decoupled from Epic software. So, it in no way gets an Oracle customer closer to Epic," said Corey Miller, Epic's VP of research and development. "This just seemed like a real opportunity to meet a need broadly in the industry that wasn't there." According to Miller, the tool can audit AI models for bias and discrimination. It was also specifically designed to be flexible and evolve as new approaches, standards, and techniques are developed. "It goes beyond just model equity, fairness [and] performance, though it does those things too," Miller said. "But it also looks at what's downstream of the model." (Turner, Modern Healthcare, 5/22)

The fight against COVID-19 has pushed healthcare to quickly adopt virtual tools at a rate much faster than normal. Some of the most promising pandemic-related health technologies go beyond just telehealth — for example, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Read on to learn three ways AI can be used to help with future pandemics.