Dr. Mohit Kaushal, director of Connected Health at the Federal Communications Commission, has joined the West Wireless Health Institute as its new Executive Vice President of Business Development and Chief Strategy Officer. Kaushal is tasked with identifying and pursuing opportunities that help the WWHI fulfill its mission to bring down healthcare costs. Kaushal's role also includes making wireless health service more broadly available to end users.
Kaushal is widely known for co-authoring the FCC's National Broadband Plan's health chapter, which focused heavily on mobile health.
In February, Kaushal presented at a mobile health event in Washington DC where he made clear his belief that mobile will have "a huge role in transforming healthcare." Kaushal pointed to the growing industry as a potential source of economic growth and job creation. At the time, Kaushal pointed to a number of key barriers for mobile health: Infrastructure, wireless spectrum, regulation concerns, reimbursement and payment reform are all key issues that the FCC believes are important to the growth of mHealth.
The FCC's National Broadband Plan laid out various strategies for the FDA to better regulate mHealth, ideas for the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare to better reimburse for mHealth and much, much more. Read more about the healthcare chapter of the NBP here.
In May at the Wireless Life Sciences Alliance event in La Jolla, Kaushal said that the federal government is going to focus on cost cutting, and it had allocated $10 billion through 2019 for the creation of a CMS Innovation Center. While CMS has conducted pilots in the past, Kaushal said it is difficult for pilots to get implemented at the “macro level.” The CMS Innovation Center will conduct pilots that reward value instead of volume, he said at the time.
Kaushal's focus on lowering healthcare costs by leveraging mobile technology helps explain his move to West Wireless Health Institute, which has made it its mission to do just that. More on Kaushal here. (PDF)
A few days ago, WWHI announced another new executive: Eric Collins joined as as senior vice president of commercial engineering and member of the Institute's management committee. Collins is responsible for moving wireless health concepts and prototypes into the commercial development phase. More on Collins here.
