Innovations in wireless technology have the potential to significantly improve the quality of healthcare, lower medical costs and expand the geographic reach of our nation’s medical professionals. From bringing cutting-edge expertise to rural towns to improving the availability of timely, accurate data bedside to promoting prevention and self-care, wireless innovation will lead the next great revolution in American health care.

Why We Care

• Improving America’s health is one of our nation’s most pressing challenges. Millions of Americans suffer from chronic diseases and the numbers continue to grow.
• The U.S. is experiencing a growing healthcare supply problem. A shortage of healthcare professionals makes it more difficult to care for a growing U.S. population.
• mHealth tools are a critical part of the solution. mHealth services and applications can help connect healthcare providers with patients either down the street or in harder to reach parts of the country. Evolving mobile healthcare technologies can also provide consumers with real-time, on-the-go care.

Our Point of View

• Wireless is a new frontier in healthcare innovation. Doctors can now access lab results, X-rays and drug information from their smart phones and patients can use their mobile devices to better track their own health – from heart monitoring to pre-natal tools. And this is just the beginning.
• Wireless policies must continue to encourage investment and innovation. Significant investment is still needed to deploy mobile-broadband enabled services and pro-growth and innovation policies must be in place to chart a clear path forward.
• Robust innovation requires more spectrum. New innovations and opportunities in mHealth will require significantly more wireless capacity. The FCC has committed in its National Broadband Plan to make more spectrum available and we encourage the Commission to move quickly to achieve this important objective.

Our Bottom Line

Policies that encourage continued investment and innovation, as well as initiatives to make more spectrum available, will spur new mHealth services and applications to meet growing consumer needs.