Health and Media

Telemedicine startups are confronting a hodgepodge of state regulations, complicating their efforts to expand their services nationwide. Companies that provide care over the web or through mobile devices scaled up rapidly during the pandemic, as overcrowding at hospitals led to more patients meeting doctors virtually. Aiding startups’ growth were temporary waivers of restrictions on telemedicine that many states enacted, including a requirement that doctors be licensed in their state to provide virtual care.

Telehealth can't succeed without expanding access to affordable broadband internet, witnesses told the Senate Commerce Committee on Oct 7. But extending the regulatory flexibilities around this access granted under the public health emergency, which are slated to expire when the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, is also critical, they said, stressing that the benefits of telemedicine can't be understated.

We might be tempted to remember this as Mark and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. A series of damaging articles in the Wall Street Journal, a whistleblower testifying before Congress, and a massive outage of the platform. But Facebook's problems date back much farther than this week. The ramifications could last long into the future—and impact much more than the social media giant.

As you might imagine, we thought there would be exciting news to share today about broadband. Not so much. As we wait for a vote on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (could it come today?

Pew Research Center released a sweeping report looking at how Americans have used the internet in the pandemic, how reliant they were on digital tools, and some of the struggles they have had as they tried to conduct many of the work-related, educational, social and community activities of their lives online. The headlines from the survey included:

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced a bill that would strip online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter of liability protections if their technology spreads misinformation about coronavirus vaccines or other public-health emergencies. Sen Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) joins Klobuchar as a co-sponsor.

At the start of the pandemic, a group of data scientists at Facebook held a meeting with executives to ask for resources to help measure the prevalence of misinformation about Covid-19 on the social network. The data scientists said figuring out how many Facebook users saw false or misleading information would be complex, perhaps taking a year a more, according to two people who participated in the meeting.

President Biden’s attack on Facebook followed months of mounting private frustration inside his administration over the social-media giant’s handling of vaccine misinformation, according to US officials, bringing into public view tensions that could complicate efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19. The false narratives that Covid-19 vaccines result in widespread death and that the U.S.

Mayo Clinic Health System unveiled its new mobile health clinic on June 28th as a way to improve health care access for those in rural communities. The mobile clinic includes two exam rooms and an onsite laboratory bringing health care directly to patients, for in-person care or virtual care via the onsite telehealth equipment.

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) projects that, $379.97 million in unused funds is available for use in future Rural Health Care (RHC) Program funding years beginning in 2021. The Federal Communications Commission directs USAC to carry these unused funds over to satisfy funding year 2021 RHC Program demand. The overall RHC Program funding cap for 2021 is $612,016,418.