November 2010

Consumers don't want to leave home without their wireless devices, allowing connectivity to be offered in places today that seemed unheard of just a handful of years ago. The trend will only accelerate as car makers see an "option-tunity" for Wi-Fi in automobiles; research firm iSuppli predicts integrated Wi-Fi systems in 7.2 million cars by 2017, a more than forty-fold increase from the 174,000 connected cars expected to hit the roads this year. Wi-Fi by itself is less useful than mobile broadband, however, and the auto industry is taking different routes to accomplish full connectivity to the cars of tomorrow. ISuppli suggests that automotive companies embracing Wi-Fi enjoy a competitive advantage over those that forego offering a wireless option. There's one road hazard with these connected cars, however: additional distractions to drivers who may find it easier to check Facebook, read email or engage in some other web-based activity.

Despite eagerness to have formal recommendations in place, the government's full health IT (HIT) policy committee this week balked at a proposal for the National Health Information Network's (NHIN) governance structure, and instead asked workgroup chair John Lumpkin, MD, to flesh out some thorny details before it could formally vote on the issue.

Those thorny details revolved around a portion of the program which called for the creation of a non-government organization (NGO) that would disseminate best practices and resolve problems faster than a formal government body could. "There is a bit of a concern that once you put those into a FACA (group formed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act), it becomes frozen. We need to have something that plays that role which has the flexibility only an NGO could have," said Lumpkin, SVP and director of the healthcare group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

At an event with public safety officials, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Genachowski announced that the FCC will take steps to revolutionize America's 9-1-1 system by harnessing the life-saving potential of text, photo, and video in emergencies.

Americans place more than 237 million 9-1-1 calls every year -- 650,000 per day:

• Seventy percent of 9-1-1 calls come from mobile phones. But increasingly, consumers are using their mobile phones less to make calls, and more for texting and sending pictures and videos. These new technologies have the potential to revolutionize emergency response by providing public safety officials with critical real-time, on-the-ground information.
• Today's 9-1-1 system is not equipped to take advantage of new technologies. 9-1-1 call centers lack the technical capability to receive texts, photos, videos, and other data. Many 9-1-1 call centers don't have access to broadband, which makes it difficult to receive incoming data, particularly in large volume. Finally, call center operators have not been trained how to effectively communicate using these new technologies.
• The technological limitations of 9-1-1 can have tragic, real-world consequences. During the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting, students and witnesses desperately tried to send texts to 9-1-1 that local dispatchers never received. If these messages had gone through, first responders may have arrived on the scene faster with firsthand intelligence about the life-threatening situation that was unfolding.
• Bringing 9-1-1 into the 21st century is one of the FCC's key public safety priorities. FCC Chairman Genachowski announced that in December he will launch a proceeding, as recommended in the National Broadband Plan, to get public input on how to transition the current system to broadband-enabled, next-generation 9-1-1. This action builds on the FCC's recent order beefing up 9-1-1 location-accuracy requirements so that first responders can quickly find people who reach out for help on their mobile phones.
• The FCC's National Broadband Plan laid out a vision for Next-Generation 9-1-1 that uses cutting-edge technologies to help save lives. 9-1-1, which was established as the national emergency number in 1968, has been a wildly successful lifeline to those in distress.