According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 85 percent of American adults own a mobile phone, and 80 percent of those mobile phone owners use their phone to send and receive text messages. Yet the only way to contact emergency services in the event of a fire, health emergency, or criminal activity is still by dialing 9-1-1 and making a phone call.
In August of last year, FCC chairman...
The Federal Communications Commission has finalized its rule on medical body-area networks (MBANs), officially allocating a portion of the wireless spectrum to wearable sensors.
Bloomberg BNA's Health IT Law & Industry Report says that the action makes the U.S. the first country in the world to open up spectrum to networks of wireless medical sensors, though MBANs will be the secondary user...
With the bring-your-own-device trend showing no signs of abating and mixed messages coming from government regulators, healthcare organizations are struggling mightily with how to secure patient data on tablets, smartphones, laptops and even wireless medical devices.
Different federal agencies see security through different prisms. The Drug Enforcement Agency, part of the Department of Justice,...
By the end of this month, the major mobile operators in the US, which cover about 97 percent of the population, will support wireless emergency alerts from federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies about imminent threats to safety, including severe weather events and missing children. The messages, also called the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) and Personalized Localized...
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to develop a mobile app that helps it collect information and send out alerts about adverse reactions to experimental medications prescribed during public health crises. The agency realized the need for such an app during the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak.
The need for the app became apparent while the FDA was handling 2009's H1N1 influenza...
With mobile healthcare growing as rapidly as it has, it was only a matter of time before the largest health IT trade group refined its efforts in this segment. That time is now.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is in the process of launching mHIMSS, its mobile initiative. mHIMSS began taking individual registrations among current HIMSS members on Nov. 2 and will...
After two years of research and a joint effort between groups of security experts working at separate academic institutions, a professor and a graduate student showed attendees at hacker conferences Black Hat and Defcon how to build a "cheap" $1,000 system to mimic the control mechanism on a pacemaker. The researchers were able to eavesdrop on private data that identified the patient, doctor,...
Healthcare benefit services provider Medagate announced a partnership this week with ReadyWireless to offer free mobile phones to Medicaid members on its OTCMedicaid card platform. Medagate offers prepaid cards under their OTCNetwork that Medicaid members can use on eligible items in pharmacies and stores. ReadyWireless aggregates Lifeline wireless service offerings and can provide Lifeline...
By Jon Linkous, CEO, American Telemedicine Association
The funny thing about “mHealth” is that it has taken on such a cult-like status among investors, industry and the media. Certainly the potential for the use of mHealth in the delivery of healthcare is huge and it may have an impact on other parts of healthcare such as chronic care management, emergency response services and the role and...
If you travel as much as I do you've no doubt seen air traffic controllers setting up the wheel chocks in front of and behind airplanes' wheels. While I'm sure those little chocks are a last line of defense for an errant airplane, it always seems to me their removal would result in a rolling 747.
Here's a relatively simple idea that would get the massive mobile health opportunity rolling.
This...
