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...
I'm getting a sense that a lot of people in health IT in general and mobile health in particular are losing sight of the big picture. This isn't about making a quick buck, exploiting the prevailing inefficient fee-for-service environment or impressing young, healthy people with flashy apps. It's about saving lives, preventing harmful errors and building a smarter, safer health system. Do the...
IBM, General Electric, Philips and other large tech firms have lobbied the FCC for at least the past year to allow wireless medical devices to use a range of wireless spectrum (2360MHz to 2400MHz) for vital sign monitoring. A recent report from Bloomberg, however, revealed that aircraft maker Boeing uses that range of spectrum to test the safety of its planes.
Plane safety vs. wireless health...
A recent Brookings Institute report that we pointed to last week has drummed up a lot of response from the political commentary crowd: Joe Rothstein, editor of EIN News, penned an editorial in U.S. Politics Today this week that picked up where Brookings Institute's Darrell West left off:
"Physicians and patients are going to have to learn how to migrate into the new medical world. That may not be...
The Brookings Institute just published a very worthwhile read: Customer-Driven Medicine: How To Create A New Health Care System, by Darrell West that aims to imagine a different healthcare system where the patient is in charge of their own health with help from EMRs, mobile phones, personalized care and more. In this fictitious world, people monitor their own weight, blood pressure, pulse, sugar...
