Resolving the Rural Care Divide Through Compassion and Collaboration

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — An upcoming Public Television program will examine how community-based behavioral health initiatives resolve geographic isolation and systemic trauma through integrated local support.

Highlands Community Services will be featured in an upcoming Public Television segment of “All Access hosted by Andy Garcia” focusing on quality behavioral health solutions. The educational broadcast examines how trauma-informed treatment models resolve long-standing barriers to mental health and addiction recovery in rural areas. Viewers will gain insight into how partnering with first responders, law enforcement, and local schools creates a compassionate safety net for vulnerable individuals.

The production highlights how utilizing community partner and patient feedback addresses systemic service gaps. Highlands Community Services shares how focusing on a comprehensive system of care enables clinical leaders to refine services, crisis intervention programs and workforce development initiatives. The segment demonstrates how evidence-based care models replace institutional fragmentation with sustainable personal healing, building stronger and healthier local communities.

“We take great pride in the investments we make in our staff and resultantly our community. Our primary focus is to develop and provide a quality, sustainable, and responsive service array to meet the behavioral health needs of our community. Regardless of diagnosis or demographics, individuals should have consistent access to industry-leading, quality care close to home.” Rebecca Holmes, Executive Director of Highlands Community Services

In many rural regions, law enforcement personnel frequently serve as primary responders during acute behavioral health emergencies, leading to unnecessary arrests and strain on public resources. Resolving this challenge requires strong community partnerships that bridge public safety and clinical care. By equipping first responders, educators, and local agencies with trauma-informed training and direct referral pathways, community service networks divert individuals from the justice system into effective treatment settings.

Establishing these collaborative care frameworks ensures that mental health crises are met with clinical expertise and compassion, protecting public safety while fostering long-term recovery.

About “All Access hosted by Andy Garcia”: “All Access hosted by Andy Garcia” is an award-winning educational documentary series distributed across Public Television stations nationwide. The program offers viewers insightful coverage on groundbreaking developments in medicine, science, technology, and culture, hosted by acclaimed actor Andy Garcia. To learn more about the series and its commitment to educational broadcasting, visit allaccessptv.com.

About Highlands Community Services: Highlands Community Services is a regional public behavioral health provider delivering comprehensive mental health, substance use, developmental, and crisis intervention services across in Southwest Virginia. Grounded in a trauma-informed, person-centered philosophy, the organization collaborates with local partners to provide accessible, high-quality care. To explore career opportunities or learn more about community programs, visit www.highlandscsb.org.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/highlands-community-services-featured-on-all-access-hosted-by-andy-garcia-302867254.html

SOURCE All Access

Integrated solution combines physical authentication, Hedera-powered traceability and enterprise process design to strengthen cocoa transparency, quality assurance, compliance readiness and consumer trust.

SCHWYZ, Switzerland, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Hashgraph Group (THG) and science and technology company Merck, are piloting a cocoa traceability solution, with PwC Germany providing consulting and implementation support. The solution connects physical product authentication with blockchain-based digital records and enterprise process design.

The solution combines THG’s TrackTrace Digital Product Passport platform, Merck’s M-Trust™ physical authentication technology and PwC Germany’s consulting and implementation experience to help verify cocoa origin, authenticity, quality, food recall needs, and compliance data from farm to consumer.

The initiative responds to rising regulatory pressure and persistent data fragmentation across cocoa supply chains. By linking each physical batch to a trusted digital identity, the solution demonstrates how brands, processors and manufacturers can improve traceability, auditability and stakeholder transparency across the value chain.

Why cocoa traceability solutions matter

Cocoa supply chains are complex and difficult to verify. Millions of smallholder farms produce most of the world’s cocoa, with significant volumes moving through indirect supply chains before reaching processors and brands. Before there was no end-to-end digital solution and proof covering the first mile to chocolate production, today there is with THG, Merck, and PwC Germany’s solution.

How Cocoa Traceability Solutions supports EUDR regulations

The solution is designed to help cocoa value chain participants prepare for EUDR-related deforestation due diligence and the broader shift toward Digital Product Passports under ESPR. By linking cocoa products to origin, chain-of-custody, authentication and due diligence data, and quality controls, the solution can help companies demonstrate that products are deforestation-free, legally produced and supported by verifiable production-area information.

For processors, manufacturers and brands, the approach can reduce manual reconciliation, improve audit readiness and support faster, more targeted action during quality or recall events. It also creates a foundation for sharing trusted product data with authorised stakeholders and, where appropriate, with consumers.

What is the THG, Merck and PwC solution

The solution creates an individual Passport for each sellable item such as cocoa by anchoring real-world product and process events to a digital twin. TrackTrace records origin, supply chain, quality and compliance data on Hedera, while Merck’s M-Trust™ technology confirms that the physical product or package being scanned is genuine. PwC Germany supports the operating model by helping define the business processes, governance, workflows and training required for enterprise deployment.

At each handover or verification point, the individual Passport can be enriched with product identity, origin data, quality records, certificates, due diligence documentation and authentication events. Authorised stakeholders can access a verifiable chain of proof, while selected information can be shared with consumers through QR-code or scan-based experiences.

How does the solution track each verification point?

The solution creates a digital twin for each cocoa batch or product unit. At defined verification points, product events are captured through scans, system integrations or process inputs. M-Trust™ verifies the raw material, physical product and packaging, TrackTrace structures the event data and Hedera provides a trusted distributed ledger layer for timestamping and auditability.

How scalable is the Solution?

While cocoa is the initial showcase, the architecture is designed for broader use in sectors where provenance, authenticity, quality and regulatory compliance are critical, including food, pharmaceuticals, luxury goods, electronics and industrial components.

The solution also highlights the importance of implementation readiness. Beyond technology integration, scalable deployment requires clear operating procedures, partner onboarding, training, controls, data governance and change management.

What are the Partner Roles

The Hashgraph Group provides TrackTrace, the Hedera-powered Digital Product Passport and traceability platform that creates the digital twin, anchors key events and enables a tamper-proof audit trail across the cocoa value chain.

Merck provides the M-Trust™ layer, the physical authentication technology that uses secure markers and scanning devices to verify that the physical product or packaging corresponds to the digital record.

PwC Germany contributes to understanding the real business problems across the value chain, supports business process design, and helps develop use cases that translate problems into practical technology solutions. 

Executive commentary

“This solution shows how cocoa traceability can move beyond fragmented documentation and self-declared claims,” said Stefan Deiss, CEO and Co-Founder of The Hashgraph Group. “By integrating TrackTrace with Merck’s M-Trust™ technology and PwC’s process expertise, we can link any physical product, not limited to cocoa, to a trusted digital record. This integration provides enterprises with a more robust foundation for compliance, quality assurance, and consumer trust.”

“Digital traceability only delivers its full value when it is connected to physical proof,” said Thomas Endress, Executive Director, Head of M-Trust™ at Merck. “M-Trust™ verifies that the product being scanned is genuine, while TrackTrace records that authentication event as part of the product’s digital history.”

“TrackTrace, enabled by M-Trust™, is redefining product compliance and customer engagement. It addresses a critical challenge faced by cocoa processors—maintaining a verifiable trail not only of the finished product, but also of its raw materials, including their quality and compliance history. This proves to be a genuine game changer in the event of a food recall or a compliance investigation. Ultimately, the solution empowers companies to shift their perception of compliance from a cost burden to a driver of value creation,” said Husen Kapasi, Enterprise Blockchain Lead at PwC Germany. “PwC’s role is to help organisations in regulatory compliance, map out supply chain process, design solution based on requirements, define workflows and enable technology provider to make traceability operational at scale.”

About The Hashgraph Group

The Hashgraph Group is a digital enablement and venture building company focused on enterprise-grade solutions built on Hedera. Its TrackTrace platform supports Digital Product Passport, supply chain transparency and trusted product data use cases for regulated industries.

About Merck

Merck is a leading science and technology company. Through the M-Trust™ technology, Merck provides a physical authentication layer that immutably connects physical products and packaging to trusted digital records.

About PwC

At PwC, we help clients build trust and reinvent so they can turn complexity into competitive advantage. We’re a tech-forward, people-empowered network with more than 364,000 people in 136 countries and 137 territories. Across audit and assurance, tax and legal, deals and consulting, we help clients build, accelerate, and sustain momentum. Find out more at www.pwc.com.  

In this document, PwC Germany refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, which is a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited (PwCIL). Each member firm of PwCIL is a separate and independent legal entity. 

The term PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of the legally independent network companies. Further details can be found at www.pwc.com/structure. 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/the-hashgraph-group-and-merck-with-support-from-pwc-germany-develop-solution-for-cocoa-traceability-and-digital-product-passports-302871953.html

SOURCE The Hashgraph Group

Reinforcing its commitment to transforming CX through AI-powered dynamic, human-like responses

TOKYO, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — transcosmos today announced the official launch of trans-AI Chat, a generative AI-powered chatbot, in Indonesia. Unlike conventional chatbots that rely on predefined scripts and conversation flows, trans-AI Chat leverages the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) to understand conversational context, recognize customer intent, and generate dynamic, human-like responses.

The solution offers a range of intelligent capabilities that enable organizations to create more proactive, data-driven customer experiences. These include AI Follow-up Message Automation, which automatically sends personalized follow-up messages such as order status updates or product recommendations based on previous interactions; AI Evaluation, which continuously monitors AI responses to ensure accuracy, consistency, and alignment with the company’s knowledge base; and Unknown Keyword Detection, which automatically identifies new questions, phrases, or topics the AI cannot yet answer, enabling organizations to continuously enrich and improve their knowledge base.

One of trans-AI Chat’s key differentiators is its intelligent escalation capability, which seamlessly transfers conversations to human agents whenever empathy, complex decision-making, or specialized support is required. The complete conversation history and contextual information are automatically passed to the agent, eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves. Developed around the concept of collaborative intelligence, this approach enables seamless collaboration between AI and human agents while ensuring a consistently high-quality customer experience across every touchpoint. Designed with high implementation flexibility, trans-AI Chat can be deployed across a wide range of industries, including banking, telecommunications, retail, FMCG, and automotive. The solution is particularly well suited for managing high volumes of customer interactions, ranging from financial service simulations and account management to interactive lead qualification.

As a leading CX and digital business services provider, transcosmos delivers integrated solutions that support various aspects of clients’ business operations in the Indonesian market. The company has earned several accolades, including Platinum Winner for Contact Center Operations and Silver Winner for Employee Engagement at the ICCA Awards—cementing its role as a key player in Indonesia’s CX and BPO industries. transcosmos reaffirms its ambition to be a strategic partner for digital transformation in Indonesia.

*transcosmos is a trademark or registered trademark of transcosmos inc. in Japan and other countries.
*Other company names and product or service names used here are trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies.

■ About transcosmos inc.
transcosmos launched its operations in 1966. Since then, we have united superior “people” with cutting-edge “technology” to enhance the competitive strength of our clients by providing them with superior and valuable services. transcosmos currently offers services that support clients’ business processes, focusing on both sales expansion and cost optimization through our 188 bases across 36 countries/regions with a focus on Asia, while continuously pursuing Operational Excellence. Furthermore, following the expansion of the e-commerce market on a global scale, transcosmos provides comprehensive One-Stop Global E-Commerce Services to deliver our clients’ excellent products and services to consumers in 46 countries/regions around the globe. transcosmos is committed to treating the challenges of its clients and society as its own—discussing and addressing their issues from planning to execution—and Make It Real, Together. Visit us here https://www.trans-cosmos.co.jp/english/

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/transcosmos-launches-trans-ai-chat-a-generative-ai-chatbot-in-indonesia-302871869.html

SOURCE transcosmos inc.