One federal agency suggesting ways that another federal agency might better do its job is commonplace in Washington D.C., but it's of particular interest for this editor when the topic is mobile health. Within the FCC's 360 page National Broadband Plan, which it unveiled earlier this week, there is a full chapter and some two dozen pages about healthcare. The FCC calls connected health "eCare"...
We have been tracking the soft launch of the White House's free mobile health service for expectant mothers, Text4baby, since early last year. While the service was planned to launch in the fall of 2009, a recent presentation from the Text4Baby team explains that the service launched this month and plans to begin marketing through partners in February. The service appears to have soft launched in...
HIStalk interviewed Voxiva Co-Founder, Chairman and President Paul Meyer this week and the result was a sprawling conversation that covered mobile phones' roles in healthcare today. Of course, the interview also included some discussion about the wireless health service, Text4Baby, that Voxiva and its partners have been quietly working on -- interestingly, Meyer told HIStalk that the "initiative...
A year ago most discussions about wireless health centered on VoIP handsets for healthcare workers, distributed antenna systems or real-time tracking systems for hospital equipment -- it was an IT industry focused on infrastructure and the health industry as enterprise.
A lot has changed in the past year. Today marks a true watershed -- Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human...
There has been a growing consensus that mobile phones are a key platform for reaching minorities in the U.S. when it comes to health information: Earlier this week we pointed readers to a report by the The Hispanic Institute and Mobile Future that found more than 50 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population uses the mobile Internet, while one about one third of U.S. whites do. The Pew Internet...
Who will be the early adopters of telemedicine? "My immediate reaction: The geeks will be the first to grab it because they grab everything but that's not a market," Michael Ackerman, assistant director of high performance computing and communications at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health said during the ATA event as moderator Dena Puskin from the HHS Office for the...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sponsored a meeting in San Diego yesterday that aimed to map future funding and research opportunities for personalized health, including preventive, genomic-research based medicine and wireless monitoring applications and services. The session included representatives from Intel, Google, Qualcomm and Cisco Systems.
Stanford professor of...
President Obama has named Clinton Administration vet Nancy-Ann DeParle to the post of Director of the White House Office for Health Reform. The position is commonly referred to as the "health czar," which Obama's first pick for HHS secretary (and health czar) Tom Daschle coined. Obama also publicly confirmed reports that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will lead the HHS.
DeParle managed...
Looks like our original post on this was spot on: According to most major media outlets, President Obama has tapped Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to be secretary of Health and Human Services. The official announcement is expected to take place Monday. Former Senate leader Tom Daschle was Obama's first nominee, but he bowed out after some $146,000 in unpaid taxes came to light during his...
Justin Goforth, Whitman-Walker Clinic
There's no doubt that the Obama administration is looking to embrace technology to better the healthcare system, mobile technologies included. The AIDS.gov site has continued their ongoing four part series on using text messaging for appointment and medication reminders: This week's post focuses on cost. (Previous posts focused on the why and how of text...
