The Future of Health Care & the Digital Divide

By Marcia Thomas-Brown, Guest IIA Blogger

As the nation’s health care services are increasingly delivered and accessed online, a divide is becoming more apparent between those who have access to broadband and those who do not. Making matters more complicated is the fact that more and more health care services are being offered online as well as mandates for electronic medical records. This trend toward the digitization of everything healthcare related could leave many unserved and underserved users on the wrong side of the digital divide.

To prevent this divide from widening, we as a nation must take affirmative steps to promote investment and innovation in broadband infrastructure as well as encouraging greater digital literacy. Without investment in critical broadband infrastructure, traditionally vulnerable and underserved segments of society will not have adequate access to broadband and the healthcare services that it will deliver. This means that underserved persons with diabetes and heart disease will not benefit from digital monitoring and online telehealth applications designed to monitor and detect abnormalities, before they become harmful or fatal problems. It is important to note that chronic disease disproportionately affects communities of color, seniors and low-income persons who stand to benefit most from chronic disease management services delivered online.

Investment — in health and digital literacy, and broadband infrastructure — is the first step toward providing access to all Americans. Innovation naturally follows next, as innovators and small business owners eager to invent new services find their way into the healthcare IT business and begin offering newer and better solutions that improve the quality of life of those with broadband access. But universal health care without universal broadband access could unintentionally create a new generation of medically underserved Americans – a new social class of high speed internet “have nots” — who will be unwillingly segregated from the broadband health care services that their fellow citizens enjoy. 

The same obstacles that technology is designed to eliminate — weather, transportation, wait times — for the health care recipient who has to travel 10 miles to a library to use the Internet to access telehealth, the obstacles to change in name only; it’s as difficult to access broadband as it is to make a traditional doctors visit. Let’s avoid this tragedy by ensuring broadband access for all Americans by preserving the environment that has borne the thriving Internet we know today.

Marcia Thomas-Brown is an IIA Broadband Ambassador, Chief Operating Officer of the National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved, and Program Manager for Health Information Technology at the Summit Institute for Research and Education. 

Digital Devices for Distended Digits

By Brad

Via the Telegraph, the Japan Sumo Association is distributing iPads to help wrestlers text and email.

The iPad Appears to be Popular

By Brad

Yesterday, Apple announced it had sold three million iPads. That’s a lot of tablets — especially since the device was only released 80 days ago.

From Far-Fetched to Reality

By Brad

Think the computer Tom Cruise used simply by moving his hands in the 2002 sci-fi flick Minority Report was far-fetched? This TED talk from last February delivered by one of the film’s science advisors just might change your mind:

(Via HuffTech.)

Today in Innovation

By Brad

Via Ars Technica comes something cool for your Friday:

Research scientist Jack Kassewitz has found that the iPad’s touch-based interface is so intuitive that even some nonhuman species can use it. In this case, that species happens to be dolphins. Kassewitz is using iPads with custom-developed software to help facilitate two-way communication between humans and dolphins.

At the very least, this research — if successful — could make it much easier to give orders to the U.S. Navy’s fleet of military dolphins.

Photo: US Navy Mate 1st Class Brien Aho

Keep That Tweet Clean

By Brad

Via Mashable comes word of a new service aiming to clean up Twitter — and make some money for charity in the process:

SwearJarr is a simple site with a simple purpose — to clean up Twitter for a good cause. SwearJarr operates with a self-policing model, so Twitter users can check their own tweets for curse word violations by inputing their Twitter names.

With an estimated 430,000 swear words tweeted each day (according to the company behind the site), there’s definitely potential to turn cussing into good.

This Will Not End Well

By Brad

We here at IIA are big supporters of innovation — heck, it’s part of our name — but this story from CNN seems just plain nuts:

Livermore, California (CNN)—Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world’s largest laser—it’s the size of three football fields—to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it’s stolen from the plot of an “Austin Powers” movie. But it’s no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.

The scientists working to destroy life as we know it develop the massive laser hope that by capturing the energy emitted from their tiny star they can solve the world’s energy crisis. Stay tuned…

End of an Era

By Brad

After close to 30 years, Sony is getting out of the floppy disc business.

Goodbye, dear floppy. You had a good run.

Streaming America’s Game

By Brad

Sony has announced that beginning later this week, owners of its popular PlayStation 3 video game console will be able to stream live Major League Baseball games on their device.

Let’s take a trip back…

By Brad

...to what the future looked like in 1969:

Fewer Regulations, More Innovations

By Bruce

Writing at Forbes, Randolph J. May of the Free State Foundation argues against imposing broad net neutrality rules:

Instead, the FCC should take a less intrusive, less rigid approach that will still allow it to deal with any real anticompetitive abuses that cause consumer harm. While it is highly unlikely that such abuses will occur in a marketplace in which consumers generally have a choice of Internet providers, there nevertheless is a properly delimited role for the FCC to play in policing and remedying any anticompetitive acts.

Rather than adopting broad-brush regulations that place ISP practices that may benefit consumers off limits, the FCC could adopt a simple rule prohibiting ISPs from engaging in practices that constitute an abuse of significant and non-transitory market power that harm consumers. A market-oriented rule like this would provide the FCC with a principled basis for adjudicating allegations that ISPs are acting anti-competitively and causing consumer harm. Using traditional antitrust-like jurisprudence that incorporates rigorous economic analysis, the Commission would focus on specific allegations of consumer harm in the context of the particular marketplace situation.

Rebuilding Haiti

By Brad

The Washington Post reports on an innovative idea to help rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure following the country’s devastating earthquake in January:

John Stanton, founder of Voice Stream and former chief executive of T-Mobile USA, wants the Haitian government to forget about rebuilding its copper wire communications network. Instead, he thinks Haiti should go mobile.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Stanton said.

Stanton pitched the idea at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas, and announced that his company Trilogy would be willing to contribute as much as $100 million to the effort.

Later in the Post article, a familiar name offers some insight:

Experts say any project to rebuild infrastructure in the nation should be open to competition. That would include laying down fiber for a stronger backbone to connect calls. Dozens of new cellphone towers would be raised to support traffic that will grow as Internet use takes off.

“It can be a fantastic opportunity, but all over the world there is also a push to have a mix of wireless and fixed-wire networks supporting broadband and communications,” said Bruce Mehlman, co-president of the Internet Innovation Alliance and former assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy. “And you must make sure that this doesn’t preclude any competition.”

IIA in the News

By Brad

On Wednesday, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies held a panel discussion called “Open Internet, Innovation and Economic Development.” A a re-cap of the event is now widely available, and highlights some of IIA Co-chairman David Sutphen’s remarks:

Panelists like David Sutphen, co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance, asked that government focus on adoption first, especially among minorities and lower-income groups.  “The National Broadband Plan is most important,” said Sutphen. “If we could get everyone who has been worried about open Internet principles focused on the digital literacy and value proposition gap, we’d go a long way towards solving the problem.”

Read Capital Wire’s full re-cap. Video is also available of the event.

Innovation in the Ecosystem

By Bruce

The American Consumer Institute has released a new study, “Innovation and National Broadband Policies: Facts, Fiction and Unanswered Questions.” From the Executive Summary:

“Innovation” has emerged as a pivotal element in the debate over whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should impose new constraints on managers and providers of broadband network infrastructures. This study brings to bear facts and analysis emerging from a review of much of the literature on innovation and especially that bearing on claims by advocates of “net neutrality,” “open networks” and related notions.

We find that innovation is thriving at both the core and the edge of the network in the current policy environment, which has fundamentally allowed the Internet to evolve with little government involvement. Further, we find no evidence that greater FCC involvement in markets for broadband services would protect or promote innovation in the Internet Ecosystem. Indeed, we believe that such intervention is more likely to discourage innovation than stimulate it.

The full ACI study is available on their website (PDF).

Today in Milestones

By Brad

Apple has announced that customers have now downloaded 10 billion — yes, billion — songs from the company’s iTunes service. Even more staggering: It took just seven years.

Cleaning Up the Store

By Brad

The Telegraph reports that Apple’s massively successful “App Store” appears to be getting more kid-friendly:

Apple has removed around 5,000 apps from its App Store, including some that it claims feature “overtly sexual” content.

Dozens of developers received a message from Apple stating that the company was refining the guidelines under which the App Store operates, and that content that it had “originally believed to be suitable for distribution” were now no longer deemed appropriate, following “numerous complaints from customers about this type of content”.

While “sexually explicit” apps require an age warning before they’re downloaded, Apple outright removing apps for sexual content is a change in direction. One theory: Apple’s new iPad, which is being heavily geared towards students and schools, is a reason for the change.

Survival: There’s an App for That

By Brad

Via MSNBC comes the amazing story of a man buried beneath rubble for 65 hours following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, his ability to use an iPhone to examine himself, and the handy first aid iPhone app that helped him treat his wounds.

Net Neutrality: Pro and Con

By Bruce

Sphere has an interesting debate today on the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules. In the pro camp, Timothy Karr writes:

Because of net neutrality, consumers have had unfettered access to new content and ideas online; our preferences and choices have determined which new ideas succeed and which don’t. Net neutrality simply means “no discrimination,” and this user-powered architecture is the reason the Internet has become such a powerful engine for consumer choice and democratic empowerment.

These protections have worked brilliantly. For two decades, the Internet thrived. It became a competitive market in the truest sense. Under net neutrality, doctoral students working out of their dorm room created Google; college students started Facebook; a Pez hobbyist invented eBay; an Israeli teenager wrote the code for instant messaging.

These innovators started small and used the Internet’s level playing field to become major forces in the new media marketplace. Their ideas have disrupted the status quo of information gatekeepers to usher in an era where content and consumers are king.

Taking the opposing view is Stephen Pociask:

The fact is that different services have different requirements in order to work properly. Activities like online videos or remote medical monitoring are easily disrupted by tiny delays—often measured in milliseconds—that keep them from working properly. Others, like e-mail, tolerate delays with little problem.

To ensure the best performance possible, network operators need the flexibility to work with the providers of content, software developers, creators of online games, and other Internet-related businesses and services. But proposed Internet regulations under consideration at the FCC would greatly limit such collaboration.

Supporters of Internet regulations, typically advocated to ensure “network neutrality,” say regulations are needed to make sure that consumers can go to whatever Web site they want. But when was the last time that your Internet provider blocked you from any activity you wanted to perform online? Chances are you’ve never had that problem. And if it occurred, the FCC already has the authority to step in quickly and clear things up.

Both editorials are worth reading in their entirety. You can also read IIA’s thoughts on the issue (PDF).

Pay as You Download

By Brad

The Hill reports that the idea of tiered pricing for broadband has gained at least some support with the FCC:

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, said companies should be able to experiment with different pricing models, especially if private carriers are expected to finance the building of faster, bigger networks to expand wireless broadband services. If people pay for the bandwidth they use, it could reduce congestion on the networks as well.

“Pricing freedom has to be essential,” he said on a panel today.

With more and more devices relying on the Internet, the long-standing “all you can eat” pricing structure for high-speed Internet is becoming increasingly unrealistic. The question is, how will consumers react to any sort of pricing change?

Highway Internet

By Brad

At CES yesterday, Ford Motor Co. unveiled a new feature for its vehicles: the Internet. From the LA Times:

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally showed off how consumers could soon catch up on Twitter, listen to Internet radio, check movie times and get free maps with turn-by-turn directions, using Sync’s voice commands or 8-inch color touch-screen in the dashboard, in Ford’s spring lineup of cars.

Today’s Internet consumer: always connected.