In other FCC news, GigaOm reports the agency will propose today a $400 million investment from the Universal Service Fund to provide rural doctors with better access to broadband:
Sources at the FCC say the program will pay for both building out better connections as well the monthly costs paid to a broadband provider. A more limited program that’s been in place for years hasn’t had many takers in part because once the connections were in place, it was still expensive to pay for the access from a rural area to the main Internet backbone.
IIA Broadband Ambassador Carl Taylor recently penned an editorial on the promise of telemedicine for the Birmingham News. Here’s an excerpt:
Telemedicine is quickly burgeoning into one of the most significant and cost-effective services in the health care industry. In addition to monitoring patients with diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, telemedicine can be used for a host of other applications, including emergency-room triage, neurology, pediatrics, mental health and geriatrics.
The applications of telemedicine are indeed endless, and the ability of specialists to provide services to those in remote areas via broadband creates a truly wonderful opportunity to revolutionize the quality of health care services to the most isolated communities. Moreover, telemedicine fits neatly into the vision of a fully electronically integrated system of health care as envisioned by the president and the Department Health and Human Services and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The future of health care in Alabama and across the United States is promising, and that promise lies in the continued development of modern broadband Internet infrastructure that will support life-enhancing telemedicine applications.
IIA is pleased to welcome its newest Ambassador: Dr. Joseph P. Fuhr, PhD.
Dr. Fuhr is a widely read and well respected expert in a number of areas which combine economics and issues facing society. His specific areas of inquiry include antitrust, health economics, pharmacoeconomics, and telecommunications.
Dr. Fuhr’s work in the areas of health economics and pharmacoeconomics is especially timely as the government and industry are using broadband as a significant tool in helping to control the spread of the H1N1 virus. In fact, an essay co-written by Dr. Fuhr for Disease Management, “Comparative Effectiveness of Total Population versus Disease Specific Neural Network Models in Predicting Medical Costs,” is particularly timely during this flu season, especially in helping to determine patterns of seasonal flu as they overlap with, or are replaced by, swine flu.
Telemedicine is a major area of interest for those involved in expanding access to and acceptance of broadband. Physicians working out of smaller health facilities have the ability, through broadband, of consulting with specialists working out of major facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away.
As a Professor of Economics at Widener University, Dr. Fuhr brings to the Internet Innovation Alliance an academic rigor which is crucial to every stakeholder in the issues surrounding broadband in America. We welcome his voice and intellect to the IIA as we continue to work with private companies, advocacy organizations, and the federal government to bring broadband into every home and business in the United States.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is holding a broadband workshop on telemedicine in Washington, D.C. As they work to build a national consensus around a broadband plan, it is important for policymakers to consider the critical benefits of telemedicine, specifically for rural and other underserved communities.
Telemedicine is becoming one of the most significant and cost-effective services in the health care industry. In addition to monitoring patients with diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, telemedicine can be used for a host of other applications, including emergency room triage, neurology, pediatrics, mental health, and geriatrics. The applications of telemedicine are endless, and the ability of specialists to provide services to those in remote areas via broadband creates a truly wonderful opportunity to revolutionize the quality of health care services to the most isolated communities.
As Director of the Center for Strategic Health Innovation at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, I have seen rural Americans benefit from remote monitoring applications that assist in the treatment of chronic health disorders. We must broaden access to broadband by dedicating more funds to building broadband infrastructure, overcoming the unwillingness to connect to broadband Internet by providing education to those who do not yet see the value, and bringing down the cost of connecting to broadband. Telemedicine is the future of rural health care because it enables rural communities to access expert care that might otherwise not be available, thus improving quality of life. While there are significant costs in providing this infrastructure, they pale in comparison to the benefits of the resulting long-term health care savings and improvement in quality of care.
Beginning August 1 in Hawaii, TriWest Healthcare Alliance, which provides health care for a third of military service members and their families, will use American Well to put soldiers and their family members face to face with psychologists and psychiatrists over the Web.
The service is part of a program mandated by the Department of Defense to address soldiers’ mental health. Accessing mental health services quickly, conveniently and privately is important for service members, said David J. McIntyre, Jr., chief executive of TriWest.
More information on the Internet and health care can be found in the IIA Broadband Fact Book.
Telehealth can save money and improve quality of life and quality of care. In Pennsylvania, diabetic patients using a remote home monitoring system averaged hospitalization costs of $87,000, versus $232,000 for members of a control group who received only traditional in-person nurse visits.
Rintels, Jonathan. “An Action Plan for America: Using Technology and Innovation to Address our Nation’s Critical Challenges.” The Benton Foundation. 2008
Carl Taylor, Director of the Center for Strategic Health Innovation (and IIA Broadband Ambassador), discusses changes in health care and telemedicine.
Health care technology today allows patients to track their own vital statistics via mobile devices and work with doctors over broadband to develop personal care strategies.
Dr. Jay Sanders, President Emeritus of the American Telemedicine Association, discusses the impact of broadband on rural hospitals and their ability to access non-local specialists through telemedicine, as well as using telemedicine to improve the quality of care while reducing rehospitaliztion in all communities.
Carl W. Taylor, IIA Ambassador and Director of the Center for Strategic Health Innovation at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, attended a recent telemedicine conference in Las Vegas. Here’s his report:
This is not the blog I intended to post from the American Telemedicine Association meeting in Las Vegas. I was going to blog on the rapid emergence of large corporations into the telehealth arena. To be sure there are still small to mid size company innovations such as InTouchHealths robotics and Vecna’s health kiosk and deployable field ready health stations. But the real buzz this year in the growing presence of companies like Cisco, Bosch and Intel. After 4 decades of being the odd rounding error in the healthcare industry, telehealth may finally be ready to emerge as a valid and commercially viable delivery option. Now my preference will be to remain hopeful that the e-health, HIT, EHR, Health 2.0 , informatics, and telehealth industries will consolidate or at least learn to play nicely together so we dont go from paper silos of fragmented care to digital silos of fragmented care. At the very least the emergence of large companies whose portfolios also include e-health and Health 2.0 strategies should push this consolidation. The ATA conference is also a bit unique in that it grew this year despite a contracting economy and though there were a few no shows due to travel restrictions in state budgets, the lure of stimulus dollars and expanded industry presence made for an outstanding turnout.
Now, let me leave traditional healthcare delivery behind and talk about what I think is an even more timely issue. As I write this we are on the front end of trying to understand the H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak. Half of my day job is teaching disaster preparedness and deploying a situational awareness software tool to over 1,000 healthcare users (we give it away so this isnt a pitch). We have worked hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters for several years in the Deep South. For the response to those events our state and federally managed system of human volunteer deployment works well. However, I believe there will be challenges to the movement of human volunteers into areas of any widespread outbreak. Widespread infectious disease outbreaks highlight the need for a broadband communication response system of virtual medical care delivered to the point of need. What will be needed if not in this outbreak, certainly in others, will be the need to provide robust real time one to one, peer to peer and one to many healthcare.
In many parts of this country specialists with critical skills are embedded in large urban medical or university settings. Widespread outbreaks, particularly those with animal vectors are just as likely to be found in rural settings. Consequently connecting the specialists virtually to the patients without the need of either to travel is simply a paramount requirement. There are good examples of networks poised to deliver this kind of virtual care such as the Montana Infectious Disease Network, whose work was presented at the ATA Disaster Special Interest Group program yesterday morning (disclaimer I had a very small role in establishing that network). I recognize building a business plan around low frequency but high severity disasters is difficult, but once established these networks can, and should also be able to support daily healthcare needs as well. Regardless, as we consider the emerging consequences of this event the need to develop regional virtual disaster medical assistance teams with robust communication connectivity becomes apparent.
Telemedicine could improve patient recovery, decrease readmission, and reduce costs by 80% simply by allowing basic medical checks, such as for weight, blood pressure, blood sugar etc., that can be performed regularly at home and then transmitted to the central database.
Fuhr, Joseph P. Jr. Broadband Services: Economic and Environmental Benefits. American Consumer Institute. October 2007.
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