Why Healthcare & Digital Inclusion Collaboration is Needed The doctor grabbing the patient’s phone. “Here–let me download MyChart so you can check your lab result yourself!” The highly skilled digital skill instructor asking me for a tutorial on the patient portal because they had never used one. Digital navigators enthusiastically encouraging patients to message their doctors through the portal. The…
The National Science Foundation today announced that Cleveland will share $2.7million with 6 other cities testing innovative methods to end the digital divide. Public Health Innovators is proud to work with DigitalC to bring affordable broadband to underserved urban neighborhoods. But we know that just making service available is not enough. Through partnerships with area health systems, we will help patients…
Originally published at innovationmatch.ama-assn.org Telehealth has become a life-saving defense against COVID-19 because it enables infected individuals to be treated from home, reducing the number of contagious people circulating in the community, reducing exposure of health care workers, and preserving scarce PPE resources. Healthcare providers have transitioned to telehealth at breakneck speed, taking advantage of loosened federal and state regulations…
Originally published at covid19healthtech.com “We will not bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control until we see and address gaps that keep tens of millions of people from meaningfully using technology.” — Amy Sheon Healthcare’s Looming Disaster is Hidden in Plain Sight Health systems and technologists have a vital opportunity to mitigate the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic by addressing a…
Originally published at iaphs.org The “Digital Skills and Connectivity as Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)” panel at the IAPHS conference in October 2018 represented an unprecedented reach across sectors to shed light on a hidden SDOH. Dr. Chris Gibbons from the FCCs Connect2Health Task Force shared that the “future of the nation’s health is fundamentally premised on the widespread availability and accessibility…
Readers of the Health Data Matters Blog know that I’ve been advocating for recognition of high speed internet access as a social determinant of health. Readers also know we believe that well constructed data visualizations can be very compelling. Well, our colleagues at Connect Your Community 2.0 (CYC) and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) just made this point for…
I had the privilege of helping to organize a visit to Cleveland by the Federal Communication Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force earlier this week. The Task Force’s “Beyond the Beltway Series” is an opportunity for FCC Commissioners to understand and promote the “transformative power of broadband technologies and next-generation communications services to improve access to health care services regardless of geography, time, distance…