Broadband-enabled advances offer huge potential for an ailing U.S. health care system. From remote monitoring to digitizing medical records to preventing subscriptions errors, broadband is improving the quality of care for Americans across the country while drastically reducing costs in an otherwise “inflationary” system.

This is not something lost at the FCC. Remember last year the Commission rolled out a $400 million grant program to improve broadband-enabled health care in rural America. Today FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and former Commissioner (now President Obama’s nominee to run the Rural Utilities Service) Jonathan Adelstein kicked off a series of national visits to health care facilities to review how increased broadband capabilities can improve the delivery of health services.

NextGenWeb attended the tour of the Healthy Babies Project, a non-profit community based organization in Washington, DC whose goal is to aid in the reduction of the dangerously high rates of infant deaths, illnesses, and low birth weight, as well as improve the health outcomes for at-risk mothers and infants. During the tour, Dr. Linda A. Randolph said, “Broadband helps resolve crisis conflict, ease communication and increase efficiency. We have a marriage between people and technology. The more accessible technology the more unified everyone would be and there would be a decrease in chances for human error.”

The second part of the program included a Press Conference at the Family and Medical Counseling Service. During the press conference, Dr. Flora Terrell Hamilton, Executive Director of the Family and Medical Counseling Service, discussed the benefits of broadband to delivering more efficient, higher quality care. “Broadband would effectively improve health care in a number of ways, including making billing, the spread of information and management all more efficient and improved. Broadband also allows for more security and a faster turnaround time in every area.” Jonathan Adelstein closed the press conference by suggesting “that a broadband literacy program needs to be started in our schools to give future generations the ability to effectively use broadband.”

We applaud Mr. Adelstein and Mr. Copps for taking the initiative to embark on an educational tour to highlight the exciting ways that broadband and technology are being used to improve healthcare, and the folks of the Healthy Babies Project and the Family and Medical Counseling Service for demonstrating the life enhancing programs they are currently using that help deliver better quality healthcare to Americans.

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