Wheeler, Clyburn Say Broadband Applications Can Drive Healthcare Solutions
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said broadband applications can transform healthcare delivery by creating new solutions to old problems. “It’s not physical networks that drive social and economic change; it’s the use of those networks, the secondary effects, that determine the…
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course of history,” Wheeler said Thursday at a broadband health conference in Jacksonville hosted by the FCC Connect2Health Task Force and the Mayo Clinic. “Virtualizing healthcare is our opportunity to have a secondary effect.” Wheeler hailed broadband network investment but said the commission must encourage consumer demand that “stimulates investment in competitive services, both wired and wireless,” available to everyone. He noted the 2015 Internet Trends report by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins' Mary Meeker, which ranks the Internet’s impact on various sectors (see Slide 8). “At the bottom of the list are government and healthcare. We can do better," Wheeler said. Also at the event, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said broadband could help "bridge the expanding chasm" between the growing demand for healthcare and the limited supply of healthcare professionals and services. She said interconnecting healthcare and advanced communications could help integrate a “fragmented medical system” and be a “force multiplier,” spurring “smart healthcare” approaches that prevent illness. “These smart systems could be exquisitely personalized to the specific needs of any of us,” she said.