A New Step in Promoting Safety and Innovation in Healthcare IT

The Federal Communications Commission is committed to accelerating the adoption and innovation of health information technology (health IT) through wired and wireless broadband. Health IT tools such as electronic health records, mobile health applications and mobile body area networks (MBANS) hold great potential to improve health outcomes and lower healthcare costs. The Commission has worked closely with federal partners like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to achieve these goals. A working group of ONC's federal advisory committee released its recommendations on this framework: The Path Toward a Risk-Based Regulatory Framework for Health IT. The workgroup, which included participation from the FCC, formed to obtain broad stakeholder input from across the health care, IT, patients and innovation spectrum. [Matthew Quinn is Director of FCC Health Care Initiatives]