The US Internet Industry Association this week released a new report on eHealth and broadband networks. We were fortunate enough to speak to the author, David McClure, and you can hear his thoughts just below.

But I also wanted to highlight a few of the study’s key findings, particularly the important role broadband plays in the future of our nation’s e-health care delivery.

USIIA provides a succinct definition of eHealth: “health services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related technologies. €? Clearly, eHealth is one area where broadband deployment is not just a good idea — it’s a critical element of success.

eHealth has already demonstrated it can reduce health care costs and increase efficiencies through better retention and retrieval of records. I mean, think about those cabinets at your doctor’s office stacked floor to ceiling with paper medical records. Now imagine the time saved by being able to access that information electronically.

eHealth also boasts improved management of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, shared health professional staffing, reduced patient and provider travel times, and fewer and shorter hospital stays.

According to USIIA, eHealth — and the broadband networks that power it — can help address the top three complaints about the U.S. health care system: high administrative costs; discrepancies in geographic coverage; and the rising cost of services themselves.

But if our nation is going to realize the promise of eHealth, broadband networks must be available — without restriction — to support the new technologies now available in the medical industry. Today’s medical records are more extensive than ever and often need to be accessed by two or more parties simultaneously. Digital images have become clearer, at the same time requiring more storage and transmission space, or bandwidth.

With new technology, new tests and new advances in medicine come ever increasing demands on today’s networks. And that means network operators must be free to optimize network traffic, so that criticial eHealth information isn’t being being held up by the latest viral video.

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