Health Information Technology

The Federal Communications Commission approved six funding applications for the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Health care providers in some of the hardest hit areas like New York will use this $3.23 million in funding to provide telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic. As part of the recently-enacted CARES Act, Congress appropriated $200 million for the FCC to support health care providers’ use of telehealth services during this national emergency.

The industry's pre-coronavirus agenda isn't vanishing — but its priorities have already been reshuffled. These agenda items have jumped to the top of the list: 1) Transforming healthcare, 2) Distance learning and the digital divide, 3) Network bandwidth and resilience, and 4) Misinformation and media polarization. 

The current global response to COVID-19 would not have been possible without telecommunications. But we need more innovation in telecommunications to build the medical infrastructure we need to deal with pandemics. society will need tools to better prepare for future pandemics that can arrive more frequently and be even more deadly than COVID-19. Possible ideas include:

President Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (or CARES Act) into law late last month. With a $2.2 trillion dollar price tag, the law has gotten a lot of attention for its direct payments to U.S. taxpayers and assistance to companies.

In order to provide further support to healthcare providers, the Federal Communications Commission should, in addition to adopting final rules for the proposed Connected Care Pilot Program, consider the following actions during the emergency:

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, doctors around the country are turning to telemedicine as a safety precaution to contain the spread of the virus. Virtual visits also enable healthcare facilities to more efficiently handle issues not related to the virus. The Federal Communications Commission's Rural Health Care Program (RHCP) is critical for enabling internet connectivity for rural healthcare facilities that may otherwise not be able to afford it by subsidizing a discount for broadband services.

Connected Nation Michigan found that while each community may face its own unique challenges to providing telehealth services, many trends and correlations may be found: 

The Department of Health and Human Services is offering grants to rural healthcare providers looking to use telehealth to improve emergency services, such as stroke, behavioral health or EMS care.

Google has struck partnerships with some of the country’s largest hospital systems and most-renowned health-care providers, many of them vast in scope and few of their details previously reported. In just a few years, the company has achieved the ability to view or analyze tens of millions of patient health records in at least three-quarters of US states. In certain instances, the deals allow Google to access personally identifiable health information without the knowledge of patients or doctors.

What happens when a prime time TV show becomes a potential healthcare policy direction, plus a side helping of broadband adoption strategy? An episode of the NBC TV medical melodrama New Amsterdam inspired a five-city telehealth pilot project involving barbershops and hair salons. The show’s medical director had a brilliant idea to enlist barbershops in African-American neighborhoods to screen customers for hypertension (high blood pressure), which leads to an overwhelming majority of the 140,000 stroke-related deaths a year.