Electronic Health Records

Awards from a $50 billion federal rural health fund included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act from July 2025 are now paying for digital health care records and home monitoring devices. But whether that remote care reaches a patient still depends on the connection in the patient's home or pocket. Maine's first-year share of that fund is $190 million, according to Andrew Solomon, a senior program manager at MCD Global Health, the Maine public health nonprofit administering the work.

Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX)—founder and co-chair of the Congressional Childhood Cancer Caucus—introduced the 

Funding for federal programs supporting broadband infrastructure and digital inclusion has tightened over the last year. With the Affordable Connectivity Program winding down in April 2024, the termination of Digital Equity Act grants in May 2025, and changes to the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, the digital divide could widen, leaving millions disconnected from essential services that rely on internet access, including healthcare.

Tory Starr is worried about the people who get medical care at Open Door Community Health Centers along California’s North Coast. “They’re the folks that work at restaurants. They’re the teacher’s aides,” said Starr, a registered nurse who became Open Door’s chief executive more than six years ago. Those patients, he said, are “really the heart and soul of rural America.” He said if his remote health centers don’t get a share of the billions of dollars Congress earmarked to transform health care in rural America, patients may soon lose services.

Five big ideas to improve the health of rural populations in the United States include "Modernize Rural Infrastructure." Rural internet service is essential for economic development but also increasingly for effective patient care with the growing use of remote patient monitoring and virtual care platforms. Telehealth, an evidence-based modality for many types of care, is possible only if patients and providers have broadband Internet service. Information technology upgrades are also needed in rural hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

OpenAI is expanding its capabilities by adding a dedicated health tab to ChatGPT, allowing people to bring in electronic medical records and other data from apps like Apple Health and MyFitnessPal. Seeking answers for health-related queries is already a top use of ChatGPT, with more than 40 million people using it daily for medical and health insurance questions. Even before the introduction of the dedicated tab, people have been flocking to ChatGPT to make sense of lab tests, navigate health insurance claims, and figure out what is causing various symptoms.

The conventional wisdom used to be that seniors would be slow to adopt new digital health technologies. A lot has changed, according to results from the first of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s survey series on the public and seniors' use of and appetite for digital health technology. Maybe COVID forced America’s seniors to get on a steep tech learning curve. Maybe their kids have educated them. Or maybe seniors have simply aged into tech or adapted to new technologies to survive, as they’ve had to do to deal with their cell phone company and streaming service—what choice do they have?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in partnership with the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is seeking public input on how best to advance a seamless, secure, and patient-centered digital health infrastructure. The request for information invites input from patients, caregivers, providers, payers, technology developers, and other stakeholders on how CMS and ASTP/ONC can: 

The Greene County (AL) Health System, with only three doctors, has no intensive care unit or surgical services.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) reintroduced the Health and Location Data Protection Act (S. 5462), legislation banning data brokers from selling Americans’ sensitive personal information. Data gathered by brokers has been used to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, out LGBTQ+ Americans, and stalk and harass individuals.