FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is the child of two doctors. So for him, the FCC's role in providing healthcare services, via telehealth, to rural communities is personal.
"When I was a kid in the late 1970s and 1980s, my dad, who was a urologist in the small town of Parsons, Kansas would often hit the road," Pai said today in an address to the Connected Health Conference in Boston. "He would drive 45...
Zip code is often the best indicator of health outcomes, so in the age of digital health, it’s no surprise that those isolated from physical healthcare hubs are often also isolated from the technology that could fill those gaps. That's why the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force has launched a new mapping to tool that will try to identify where broadband could be...
Speedy response is what emergency services are all about. But when it comes to responding to changes in technology, emergency response providers can be a little slow. The Federal Communications Commission announced last year that, with the penetration of smartphones and cellphones, the time had finally come for a next generation 911 service where people could use text messages, and even...
Without any noticeable fanfare, the Federal Communications Commission has chosen its new director of health care initiatives: Matthew Quinn. The agency first published a job posting for the position in December.
Quinn has previously worked at a number of government agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (...
The Federal Communications Commission will provide $400 million in funding to rural hospitals and care facilities to support telemedicine infrastructure.
Starting at the end of the summer in 2013, nonprofit hospitals will be able to apply for funding to build or expand their broadband networks, allowing rural clinics to connect to urban medical centers to allow remote consultation with...
Back in September, MobiHealthNews reported that the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) mHealth taskforce recommended, among other things, that the FCC hire a healthcare director. A job posting for that position has now been posted by the FCC.
According to the post, the Director of Health Care Initiatives will serve for a maximum of four years. The Commission hopes to hire someone with a...
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 85 percent of American adults own a mobile phone, and 80 percent of those mobile phone owners use their phone to send and receive text messages. Yet the only way to contact emergency services in the event of a fire, health emergency, or criminal activity is still by dialing 9-1-1 and making a phone call.
In August of last year, FCC chairman...
Last week at a Brookings Institute forum examining how mobile technology influences health innovation, Brookings vice president and director of governance studies Darrell M. West repeatedly said that the Federal Communications Commission needed to open up dedicated wireless spectrum for healthcare use.
Two days later, the FCC approved a proposal to open up some of the spectrum—reclaimed when the...
