AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Customer Solutions

one of the first images taken by NASA's Perseverance Rover on Mars

Perseverance lands on Mars, cloud-ready to explore

AWS is helping NASA JPL reach an inaugural and innovative milestone in deep space exploration. On Thursday, February 18, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover landed on Mars, after its 7-month, 300-million-mile journey from Earth. This is the first planetary NASA mission, with mission-critical communication and transfer of telemetry data in the cloud. During Perseverance’s mission on Mars, the science and engineering data will be processed and hosted in AWS, enabling the Mars 2020 mission to benefit from the scalability, agility, and reliability of the cloud.

hospital staff standing close together with arms crossed torsos only

Digitally revolutionizing workforce management in healthcare

COVID-19 highlighted the existing shortage in personnel within healthcare and is now challenging many hospitals with high staff turnover and sick leave. Planerio created workforce management solutions that help healthcare organizations modernize their workforce administration. Their shift planning software uses artificial intelligence (AI) and takes into account a range of planning variables such as employee qualifications and availabilities, employee preferences and requests, requirements of different shifts and workplaces, legal regulations and tariffs, and more.

Hope orbiter Mars, photo courtesy of MBRSC, United Arab Emirates

UAE Mars mission uses AWS to advance scientific discoveries

On February 9, a new object successfully began to orbit Mars: an uncrewed spacecraft called the Hope Probe. The mission has already returned the first image of Mars, taken by Hope’s Emirates eXploration Imager from an altitude of 24,700 km. Led by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), the Hope Probe is the first interplanetary mission for the United Arab Emirates, the fifth country in history to reach the red planet. It will also be the first spacecraft to capture a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers during different times of the day and different seasons for one complete Martian year. Once data transmitted by the Hope Probe reaches the scientific teams on Earth, MBRSC will use AWS advanced technologies to process and analyze the vast amounts of data and imagery to help researchers better understand the Martian atmosphere and its layers.

hands hold paper college application form next to an open laptop

Ellucian and Troy University: Automating processes for greater efficiency and innovation

Now, students have an even higher expectation for seamless digital experiences to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and access social services right from their phones—anywhere, anytime. As institutions scrambled to fulfill student demand and convert workflows to digital, COVID-19 made administrators aware of the need to create flexibility, help staff work as efficiently as possible, and overhaul processes. Read on to learn how Troy University used AWS Partner Ellucian Workflow to digitize important protocols and improve service to students and prospective students while reducing manual errors.

Global Founders TestWe CollegeDekho

EdTechs evolve college admissions and testing processes for students

AWS EdStart Members—Clément Régnier, co-founder and CEO of TestWe in France, and Ruchir Arora, founder and CEO of CollegeDekho in India—are simplifying and reducing the exam and college admissions process for students. TestWe creates a secure, offline, and comfortable exam experience for students. CollegeDekho acts as the liaison between colleges and students, connecting students with an array of services through the college admission process. Read on to learn how these founders are developing the next generation of education solutions.

Telehealth NLCHI

How NLCHI provides hybrid access to their EHR system through AWS PrivateLink

The Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information (NLCHI) provides quality information to health professionals, the public, researchers, and health system decision makers. Through collaboration with the health system, NLCHI supports the development of data and technical standards, maintains key health databases, carries out analytics and evaluation, and supports health research. This post details how NLCHI is able to provide secure and scalable access to their on-premises provincial electronic health record (EHR) system, by trusted and authorized partners who run on AWS, through the use of AWS PrivateLink, Network Load Balancer, and AWS Site-to-Site VPN.

iCivics

Using digital games to teach civics

iCivics is the education nonprofit that US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded in 2009 to transform civic education and rebuild civic strength through digital games and lesson plans. It is the country’s largest provider of civic education content and is currently used by more than 120,500 educators and 7.6 million students annually. All of its games are free, nonpartisan, and available at www.icivics.org. Through their use of Amazon Aurora, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon CloudFront, and AWS CodeDeploy—and AWS security automation tools including AWS Security Hub, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon GuardDuty—iCivics has been able to scale and increase student engagement.

Alayacare

AlayaCare reimagines in-home and virtual care with AWS

AlayaCare, a Canada-based health technology organization founded in 2014, offers a platform for home and community care organizations. The cloud-based platform provides an end-to-end solution for care providers, including back office functionality, client and family portals, remote patient monitoring, and mobile care worker functionality. AlayaCare aims to help care providers by arming them with the technology and data insights they need to deliver personalized care. Using AWS, AlayaCare is building their vision of the future of in-home and virtual care.

close up of man holding cell phone

Keeping Canadians safe while protecting their privacy: COVID Alert app

The Government of Canada (GC) set ambitious goals at the onset of COVID-19. One goal: to offer a mobile app to notify its users of possible exposures before symptoms appear in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize their privacy. In July, the GC released the COVID Alert app, an exposure notification application. COVID Alert doesn’t require users to enter—nor does it obtain from the mobile device—any personally identifiable information (PII) and doesn’t use location tracking. Let’s take a look at COVID Alert app’s cloud-based architecture and how the app is helping slow the spread of COVID-19, and helping keep Canadians safe while protecting privacy.

AWS EdStart_Global Founders_Blog Graphic_Genially_Studos

Increasing student engagement through new visual presentation development and test taking tools

AWS EdStart Members—Chema Roldan, co- founder and CTO of Genial.ly in Spain and Leonardo Prates, co-founder and CEO of Studos in Brazil—are enhancing the classroom experience for students and teachers. Genial.ly is focused on enabling students and teachers to create and deliver digital presentations. Studos is focused on helping students enhance their test performance through automatic feedback using AI. Read on to learn how these founders are developing the next generation of education solutions in the AWS Cloud.