CHICAGO – The Federal Communications Commission is joining the healthcare networking fray, announcing a plan last month to create a pilot program to deploy broadband health networks.
Announced by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, the proposal would fund a $400 million Rural Health Care Pilot Program that would help create broadband telehealth networks in 42 states and three U.S. territories.
Martin made the announcement at the 17th meeting of the American Health Information Community, held in Chicago in conjunction with the annual conference of the American Medical Informatics Association.
“With the pilot program, the commission will be taking a major step toward the goal of connecting healthcare facilities across the nation with one another through broadband telehealth networks,” he said.
The initiative can help advance the National Health Information Network. Martin estimated that over the three-year life of the program, it will ultimately enable connections with about 6,000 healthcare providers, specifically looking to bring bandwidth to rural and underserved areas.
The FCC last year launched a pilot program to begin providing funding for as much as 85 percent of an applicant’s cost of deploying a dedicated broadband network to connect healthcare providers in rural and urban areas within a state or region. Some 81 regional and state health networks have submitted applications, he said.
Healthcare facilities qualified to participate in the pilot program would use funding to leverage existing telehealth networks or build new, comprehensive systems for telehealth projects. RHCPP participants would be eligible for universal service funding to support much of the costs associated with the design, engineering and construction of innovative and highly efficient broadband systems.
All the new broadband initiatives will connect to a national backbone that will be based on standards being developed by HHS to foster the NHIN. In addition, the networks also will be able to provide access to the public Internet.
“The broadband deployment at the core of the FCC’s program blends perfectly with the work of AHIC and HHS to accelerate the development and adoption of health information technology,” Martin said.
While the FCC can’t mandate that organizations getting grants must use AHIC-backed standards, it will begin a coordinating process with HHS to advance those standards, he said. n