Health care industry a challenge, opportunity for telecom

Even where health care is easily available, it is often inefficiently delivered, which is why the Obama administration made improved healthcare IT and creation of digital health records one of its earliest initiatives. Telecom service providers see a major opportunity to help health care become more efficient and provide better service over a wider geographical area at the same time.

“There is widespread acknowledgement whether you’re talking about providers or payers or other players within the healthcare ecosystem that the industry is not nearly as efficient as it could be,” said Barry Zipp, director of Verizon Connected Health Care Solutions. “A lot of other industries, whether it’s financial services or retail, have invested very heavily over the past couple of decades in information technology. The health care industry, particularly within the provider space, has really lagged in that area. I think there is widespread recognition now that they are going to have to invest heavily to catch up. And when I say invest, I mean in ways to automate the flow of information and standardize the storage and transmission and viewing of information with the overall aim of helping the interoperability within the system improve.”

Achieving the kind of end-to-end information flow will be a difficult and complex task, given the many disparate and competing systems in use, the lack of standards and the U.S. health care system, unlike single-payer systems in the U.K. and Canada, has many moving parts. But it is in achieving that kind of networked health care system that the telecom industry can be of the greatest use, said Bob Miller, executive director of technology research at AT&T Labs.

“It tells how our devices and systems will work in a real network with real databases and APIs and health care records and systems and all of that stuff including network security and database resiliency and disaster recovery and all of that,” Miller said. “I think, if I might go out on a limb here, I think that, without that, the whole telehealth thing may be doomed to continuation of niche mentality.”

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