FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai
Last week, the FCC passed an order accelerating its text-to-911 roll out by requiring all carriers, as well as certain dedicated texting apps, to support text-to-911 by the end of the year. However, two members of the commission, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Reilly, dissented from the order, suggesting that because the public safety answering points (PSAPs) that process 911...
The FDA, along with the FCC and ONC has finally released the report to Congress required by the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA) of 2012. This FDASIA report, called "Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework," reiterates previously articulated FDA positions on regulatory discretion and avoiding regulatory redundancy between the FDA, ONC, and FDA. It's based on the...
Sharon Klein and Dayna Nicholson
Even though the FDA guidance on mobile medical apps is now finalized, it only represents a portion of the regulation mobile medical app developers need to concern themselves with, according to Pepper Hamilton lawyers Mark Kadzielski, Sharon Klein, and Dayna Nicholson, who presented a webinar on the topic last week. Particularly in the areas of privacy and...
Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA)
This week the US House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Health held a hearing to discuss the "Federal Regulation of Mobile Medical Apps and Other Health Software", which ended up being a partial re-run of the committee's FDA-apps hearings back in March. This time around, however, the committee stacked the witness table with supporters...
Departing national health IT coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari would prefer that the Food and Drug Administration unilaterally issue a long-anticipated final guidance on mobile medical apps rather than waiting for inter-agency consensus with the Federal Communications Commission and Mostashari's own Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
"I testified before Congress...
Speedy response is what emergency services are all about. But when it comes to responding to changes in technology, emergency response providers can be a little slow. The Federal Communications Commission announced last year that, with the penetration of smartphones and cellphones, the time had finally come for a next generation 911 service where people could use text messages, and even...
Although disposable body-worn wireless medical sensors have barely begun to see usage in healthcare, research firm ABI is predicting they will rise to prominence very quickly. By 2018, ABI analysts say, disposable Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) sensor shipments will hit 5 million. Previously, ABI reported that 160 million wireless wearable health devices, of which disposable sensors are a sub-...
Some time last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) quietly filled its long-vacant Director of Healthcare Initiatives position, responding to a call made last September by its mHealth task force. The FCC's appointee, Matthew Quinn, is no stranger to healthcare innovation. With a background in two previous government agencies and a number of large and small healthcare companies,...
The Federal Communications Commission will provide $400 million in funding to rural hospitals and care facilities to support telemedicine infrastructure.
Starting at the end of the summer in 2013, nonprofit hospitals will be able to apply for funding to build or expand their broadband networks, allowing rural clinics to connect to urban medical centers to allow remote consultation with...
Back in September, MobiHealthNews reported that the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) mHealth taskforce recommended, among other things, that the FCC hire a healthcare director. A job posting for that position has now been posted by the FCC.
According to the post, the Director of Health Care Initiatives will serve for a maximum of four years. The Commission hopes to hire someone with a...
