James Polson keeps the letter tucked away as a treasured memento. The Children's Heart Center administrator, a nurse practitioner, had taught infant CPR to parents of children in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). One day, he got a letter from one of those families, thanking him for the lesson that saved their child's life.

Blood was drawn on what was thought to be a routine visit to UMMC. A child, 23 months old and born to an HIV-infected mother, was being checked for virus levels. Treatment with a combination of antiretroviral drugs had been started just 30 hours after birth. The cocktail was doing its job; there was a diminishing viral presence that was virtually undetectable by 29 days old.

About a year ago, Emily Tandy of Flowood discovered years of tanning delivered a life-threatening reminder: melanoma.

Health-care organizations like the University of Mississippi Medical Center have now become a favored target of cybercriminals.

The Ponemon Institute, an independent research organization focused on privacy, estimates that medical identity theft affected 1.8 million people in the United States at a cost of $80 billion in 2015 alone.

The institute suggests criminals were able to exploit information from medical records to commit fraud four times more often than other types of identity theft.

A number of interesting events is scheduled for the upcoming week at the Medical Center.