Rep Honda aims to spur mobile health innovation

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) introduced legislation that aims to support mobile health and health technology innovation and adoption in part by requiring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to establish an office of wireless health technology.

Rep Honda, who represents Silicon Valley, introduced the Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act. There is "a lack of an established marketplace for new technologies and a lack of trained workers to handle the implementation and use of these technologies," Honda said in a news release. "This bill begins to bridge these gaps." The bill would establish a mobile health, or mHealth, developer support program at HHS and create prize and grant programs to encourage development of new health information technology. Certified electronic health-record technologies are excluded from the programs. In addition, the legislation would develop a low-interest small-business loan program for clinics and physician practices to encourage purchases of new health IT technologies and services, including EHRs, as well as a grant program to support providers as they retrain employees for new health IT-related positions.