March 2014

Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius gave US healthcare innovation a grade of Incomplete.

“That's really the great dichotomy of the time we're living in,” Secretary Sebelius said. “We live in a 21st century world with a 20th century delivery system. We live in a world in which the National Cancer Institute is texting teens to convince them to quit smoking, but ask any parent how easy it is to get their kid's immunization report from the doctor's office.” Although new health innovations, discoveries and technologies are allowing Americans to live longer, healthier lives, the processes of patient experience -- such as how patients manage their health, how they choose a physician and how doctors work together to create a treatment plan -- have not always kept pace with new medicines, vaccines and procedures, Secretary Sebelius said in addressing attendees at the Care Innovation Summit put on by the Aspen Institute and Advisory Board. The answer, Secretary Sebelius suggested, is twofold: Unlock and release the information that drives innovation; and align payment for care in a way that pays for better outcomes and innovations, rather than for more operations and hospital readmissions. And the federal government can help by unlocking some of this information. HHS has been doing that in part through the Hospital Compare website, which allows patients to compare categories such as patient experience, average wait times and whether a hospital has medical imaging capabilities, Secretary Sebelius said.

[Commentary] We had high hopes for massive open online courses (MOOCs). A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education revealed that MOOCs aren’t making the grade when it comes to educating users. On average, only about 50 percent of those who registered for a course ever viewed a lecture, and only about four percent actually completed the courses. So, where are MOOCs missing the mark? In particular, there are three key areas where MOOCs had the opportunity to disrupt the traditional education model but have not yet done so.

Where have MOOCs failed to disrupt?

• Changing the way knowledge is assessed and credentialed
• Increasing access to knowledge. Much of the excitement surrounding MOOCs was they would make quality education accessible to students in poor countries who had little access to higher education. But, a recent survey from the University of Pennsylvania revealed that those taking the university’s MOOCs weren’t the underserved students. Instead, nearly 80 percent of those enrolled had already earned a degree of some type.
• Shifting the focal point of knowledge

Although MOOCs have failed in these three areas, they have gone on to fulfill a different role in modern education. MOOCs have changed the way schools create and share knowledge, opening their eyes to new technologies that can change the way students learn. Ultimately, MOOCs have convinced schools that one of their roles is to actually create a public good of knowledge, and take a more active role in developing a curriculum that takes advantage of the latest technologies to fully engage students.

[Leah is Senior VP of Operations at Kaltura. Michal is President and co-founder of Kaltura]

[Commentary] The final accounting from the 2013 Broadband Connect America Fund program is all but completed -- and the results were considerably different from what occurred with the 2012 program. There are two key takeaways about the program, which is designed to help spur broadband deployment in rural America. First, the plan to allow a carrier to request and obtain additional funding that other carriers declined succeeded in increasing overall participation in the program. Second, a considerable amount of funding that carriers requested was challenged by competitors who argued that they already provided broadband to some of the homes for which funding was requested. And in the majority of cases, the FCC resolved the disputes in favor of the competitors.

The Department of Commerce’s Economics & Statistics Agency (ESA) has taken a valuable step toward measuring the digital economy by looking at the contribution of digital technology to international trade.

As part of the work of the Commerce Internet Policy Task Force, ESA released a study in January on the value of "digitally-enabled" cross-border trade -- “services that are principally or largely enabled by information and communication technologies,” mainly services other than construction, royalties and license fees, insurance and financial services, and telecommunications. The study found that this trade “accounted for over 60 percent of US service exports in 2011, and about 17 percent of overall US goods and services exports. In dollar terms, US exports of digitally-deliverable services totaled $357.4 billion, while imports totaled $221.9 billion, resulting in a trade surplus of $135.5 billion.” Almost half of this trade surplus came from trade with Europe, valued at total exports of $162 billion and a net of $61 billion. The ESA study underscores the importance of the flow of digital information to the United States and global economies, and in particular of ensuring that ongoing Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership negotiations and discussion of the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework enable the continued flow of digital information and “digitally-enabled cross-border trade.” The fallout from the Snowden disclosures has strengthened European voices wanting to increase digital trade barriers, but the stakes are too high on both sides of the Atlantic.