September 2010

Authors issue reality check on health IT

A pair of Boston-area researchers with a penchant for planting proverbial two-by-fours of reality between the eyes of federal healthcare information technology policymakers have landed another whack.

You have to look really hard to find the bright side in the most recent writings of Ashish Jha and Catherine DesRoches. Their article, published online in the policy journal Health Affairs, declares that roughly 2% -- and that's rounding up -- of U.S. hospitals in 2009 would have had a chance at passing muster under the new federal criteria for meaningful use of health information technology. The overriding message is that even after five years of federal health IT cheerleading, about 98% of hospitals would have failed to qualify for federal subsidy payments for the purchase of electronic health-record technology under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The researchers also conclude that there is a discernable IT adoption gap between the digital haves and have-nots in this country, that the divide is widening, and that the jury is still out as to whether the IT incentives portion of the federal stimulus law will remediate or exacerbate the problem of IT inequality.

FCC Tweaks Medical Radio Rules

The Federal Communications Commission has issued a final rule making modifications and clarifications to previous rules governing the Medical Device Radiocommunications Service, or MedRadio. MedRadio is an ultra-low power, unlicensed mobile radio service for transmitting data in support of diagnostic or therapeutic functions associated with implanted and worn medical devices, according to the FCC.

MedRadio permits individuals and medical practitioners to utilize ultra-low power medical implant devices, such as cardiac pacemakers and glucose monitoring devices, without causing interference to other users of the electromagnetic radio spectrum. The final rule, published Aug. 26 in the Federal Register, addresses a petition for reconsideration from device manufacturer Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis. The company requested modifications in how transmitter power is measured to permit measurement techniques previously allowed under rules that later were superseded.

The New Momentum Behind Electronic Health Records

[Commentary] The entire health care industry is starting to see how much it has to gain from health information technology. Still, the biggest benefits from this transformation will go to people like Will Bloedow who also spoke at the press conference. Like a lot of Americans, Will struggles with chronic disease, juggling a heart condition, diabetes and asthma. When he experienced a heart incident while traveling in Minnesota recently, Will's hospital in Wisconsin sent his entire medical record to the Minnesota hospital by secure email within half an hour—saving time, money and possibly, his life. Over the last 30 years, we've watched information technology revolutionize industry after industry, dramatically improving the customer experience and driving down costs. Now that government and stakeholders are coming together we are finally poised to make the same transformation in health care and leave the days of illegible notes, misplaced folders and musty file cabinets behind for good.

Google introduces Gmail-linked phone service

Google offered consumers another reason to ditch their traditional landlines by unveiling a service that lets them make free phone calls through its popular e-mail program. Google is allowing U.S. users to place free calls domestically and to Canada through its Web-based Gmail service, using their computer's built-in speaker and microphone, or a headset. It's the latest in a series of additions to Gmail that are increasingly transforming the service into an all-in-one communications tool where people can manage contacts, e-mail, chats, video conferencing and now phone calls.

Islamic Issues Ignite the Blogosphere

For the second week in a row, the debate over a planned mosque near the World Trade Center site raged in the blogosphere. But this time, a different set of voices dominated that conversation. From August 16-20, 14% of the news links on blogs were about the mosque controversy, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. One week earlier, the same topic was the second biggest story in the blogosphere (18% of the links), and in that case, the commentary was dominated by anti-mosque voices.

Blair Levin: Fix the Universal Service Fund

Levin, who directed the creation of the National Broadband Plan while he was at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said that it is essential to overhaul the Universal Service Fund. "The current Universal Service system is broadly flawed," he said. "It creates false incentives. It creates situations where we're paying one phone company $17,000 per line, per year. ... The point is, if we don't fix that -- and part of the Broadband Plan is about fixing that -- the vision of broadband doesn't matter."

He also said it is understandable that many Americans fail to see the broad public benefits of the Internet. It's because the government has been slow to show them those benefits. "We as a country haven't been effective at utilizing the platform for, essentially, public services," he said.

USTelecom: Network neutrality fight distracts from the Broadband Plan

Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom -- the lobbying association for broadband providers -- said that the telecom community should get back to talking about the broadband plan amid all the bickering over network neutrality.

"Our hope as an industry is that we'll be able to get back to the broadband plan and that we'll be able to get back to these consensus objectives," he said. "To the extent net neutrality is an issue that needs to be resolved, [we hope] that there will be an acknowledgement of the fact that there is both an investment and deployment aspect to this that needs to be addressed and that there are also certain social aspirations for how we want the Internet to operate. But this does not need to happen on a partisan basis."

Consumers Union questions safety of paying with smart phones

Paying for a shopping spree by waving a smart phone may be more exciting than swiping a credit card, but according to Consumers Union, it might not be as safe.

The nonprofit testing and information organization, which publishes Consumer Reports, called on regulators to implement protective standards on mobile payments. Federal law currently shields credit or debit card holders from many charges associated with lost, stolen or misused cards. But without industry-wide rules for "digital wallet" providers, consumers could risk losing money through fraud, merchant disputes or processing mistakes, the group said. Existing regulations are piecemeal, said the group. Mobile payments linked to credit cards are the most protected, with limited liability for unauthorized transactions and the right to argue about certain charges. Phone purchases hooked up to debit cards have fewer safeguards. But mobile payments would probably increase the number of charges funneled through prepaid cards and phone bills, which are even less protected. While mobile payments are already common in countries such as Japan, they're just now catching on in the U.S. Some critics have raised privacy and hacking concerns.

ITS Launches Its First Telecommunications Science Video Series for the Public

The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), a division of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, today released a collection of online training and educational videos for public viewing on ITS's website. These videos cover telecommunications topics ranging from an easily understandable review of the fundamentals of radio spectrum -- such as defining decibels using common logarithms—to in-depth explanations of complex engineering issues like resolving signal-interference problems.

In announcing the public posting of this video collection, Al Vincent, Director of ITS, stressed that this is the first of what he expects to be a valuable educational series. "The publication of these videos reflects ITS's goal to be not only a technical resource for telecommunication standards development, but also a trusted, impartial informational resource for industry, students, the general public, and other government organizations," said Vincent. "This unique web-published video series represents a significant expansion in the accessibility of ITS's research findings for the public, and we certainly hope to continue to make information on additional topics available in this way."

Eight Things to Know About How the Media Covered the Gulf Disaster

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which began with the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20 and continued to gush for another three months, posed a daunting set of challenges for the news media.

Unlike most catastrophes, which tend to break quickly and subside almost as fast, the spill was a slow-motion disaster that demanded constant vigilance and sustained reporting. The story was also complex, dominated by three continuing and sometimes competing story lines from three different locales—the role of the London-based oil company, the efforts of the Obama Administration, and the events in the Gulf region -- that taxed reportorial resources and journalistic attention spans. Coverage of the disaster also required a significant amount of technical and scientific expertise. The news media, in short, found themselves with a complicated, technical and long-running disaster saga that did not break down along predictable political and ideological lines. And they were reporting to an American public that displayed a ravenous appetite for the spill story.

A study of the coverage reveals:

The oil spill was by far the dominant story in the mainstream news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of the newshole—almost double the next biggest story. In the 14 full weeks included in this study, the disaster finished among the top three weekly stories 14 times. And it registered as the No. 1 story in nine of those weeks.
The activities in the Gulf—the cleanup and containment efforts as well as the impact of the disaster—represented the leading storyline of the disaster, accounting for 47% of the overall coverage. Next came attention to the role of BP (27% of the coverage). The third-biggest storyline was Washington based—the response and actions of the Obama Administration (17%).
The Obama White House generated decidedly mixed media coverage for its role in the spill saga, but questions about its role diminished over time—in part thanks to a Republican misfire. And the administration fared considerably better than BP and its CEO Tony Hayward, who on balance were portrayed as the villains of the story.
BP emerged as the antagonist in the media narrative about the oil spill, particularly its CEO Tony Hayward. But outside of two Louisiana politicians playing smaller roles, none of the top newsmakers were portrayed as protagonists in the saga.
The Gulf saga was first and foremost a television story. It generated the most coverage in cable news (31% of the airtime studied), with CNN devoting considerably more attention (42% of its airtime) than cable rivals MSNBC and Fox News. The spill also accounted for 29% of the coverage on network news as the three big commercial broadcast networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—spent virtually the same amount of time on the story.
The spill story generated considerably less attention in social media, on blogs, Twitter and You Tube. Among blogs, for example, it made the roster of top stories five times in 14 weeks. But during those weeks one theme resonated—skepticism toward almost all the principals in the story.
While some did better than others, many traditional media outlets made effective use of interactive features on their websites to track key aspects of the disaster. The PBS NewsHour's Oil Leak Widget, for example, monitored the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf. The New York Times site offered a video animation that helped explain how a last ditch effort to prevent the spill failed.
If anything, public interest in the Gulf saga may have even exceeded the level of mainstream media coverage. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, often between 50% and 60% of Americans said they were following the story "very closely" during these 100 days. That surpassed the level of public interest during the most critical moments of the health care reform debate.

Benton

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