Bettering Healthcare Through Broadband: The Top Ten Apps

I've been getting a lot of requests recently by city, state, and national entities to help lay out the case for why we need more bandwidth in particular as it relates to specific applications that can improve our lives through broadband.

To best accomplish this task I've decided to focus on specific verticals, starting with the top ten applications for bettering healthcare through broadband.

Let's take a look at the list:

Telesurgery - Ranging from a surgeon observing and consulting a surgery remotely through high quality videoconferencing to actually performing the surgery through advanced robotics, telesurgery enables anyone to leverage the skills of the best surgeons from anywhere using broadband that's high capacity for video and low latency so there's no lag between what the surgeon's intent and the robot's actions.

Teleradiology - Rather than being limited to the medical expertise housed in any one healthcare facility at any given time, teleradiology allows for the results of MRIs, CAT scans, and X-rays to be reviewed by specialists from around the globe 24 hours a day. And as these test results consist of a series of high resolution images that convey what's happening in a patient's body they need high capacity networks to speedily transfer the files so that medical opinions can be turned into medical care as quickly as possible.

Remote examinations - Whether in a medical facility, at home, or outside and on the go, through broadband doctors can examine patients anywhere through a combination of videoconferencing and integrated diagnostic tools. In this way doctors can start examining patients immediately after injuries happen, they can consult with patients who get to stay in their homes and save the drive into the office, psychologists can conduct psychological examinations on prison inmates without moving them from their cells, and so much more. All using broadband to empower two-way high quality video communication.

Patient monitoring - In addition to specific examinations, through broadband medical professionals can keep tabs on ailing patients without having to physically be at their sides at all times. Robots can monitor ICU patients, retirement facilities can share personnel between buildings to save costs as they keep a 24-hour vigil, and bed-ridden patients at home can have their health monitored around the clock. All possible through ubiquitous high-speed broadband.

Patient/family communication - It used to be an ailing patient's only connections to the outside world whether they were in the hospital or at home were the telephone for talking to friends and family and the television for keeping up to date on what's happening in the world. Now through broadband they can not only have instant access to the world's news, they can communicate face-to-face with loved ones through videoconferencing while also being able to learn about their condition and treatments as they recover.

EMRs - Electronic medical records replace traditional paper-based patient records and make it so that doctors always have access to all their patient's relevant medical data, including history, lab results, allergies, and more. No more waiting for paper records to be mailed or faxed between offices. No more lost pages or missing information. And EMRs can include advanced features like an automatic drug interaction checker to make sure different doctors don't prescribe drugs that conflict with each other.

Personal Health Records - Personal health records are the patient-facing component of EMRs. They allow patients to access all their medical information from anywhere, including the status and results from their most recent tests and exams. Personal health records can also include a number of additional functionalities, like pain and food diaries, symptoms checkers, libraries of relevant medical information, exercise managers, and more. And all this patient-generated data can be shared with their doctors to help in diagnosis and treatment of ailments.

Video translator network - Translation services are currently largely limited to the telephone, but with broadband available these services are beginning to leverage high quality two-way video to help communicate with patients in emergency rooms specifically and hospitals more generally. By the patient, doctor, and translator all being able to see each other broadband is enabling better communication between people who speak different languages. And this technology can be revolutionary for the effective real-time translation of sign language.

Doctor social networks - Broadband-powered social networks can help doctors stay up to date with the latest medical advances and techniques and connected with their peers across the globe. Whether it's to tap expertise for advice on specific consultations, to generally improve their overall knowledge, or just to get support from others having to deal with the same high-stress job, these social networks can improve doctors' ability to provide the best care to their patients. And these same social networks can also be used to unite nurses, EMTs, and other medical professionals.

Patient social networks - The sociological construct of a patient social network already exists in the form of patient support groups where people suffering from the same maladies can come together, share their stories, and support each other. Now broadband is enabling these support groups to go online and use social networking technologies. These social networks afford patients access to a greater number of fellow sufferers, more tools to share their stories with and learn from others, and most importantly the ability to participate in these groups even if they're not able to physically move from their rooms. In these ways, broadband is helping patients feel supported thereby improving their mental state and therefore their ability to at least feel better and often recover more quickly.

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It's important to note that while some of these applications may seem more relevant to hospital than homes and therefore less relevant to the debates surrounding residential broadband, know that they all can benefit from the ubiquitous availability of high-speed connectivity.

For example, doctors can consult from anywhere they have a broadband pipe big enough to watch live video to sit in on a surgery or receive the images from an MRI. Remote examinations become even more powerful when able to be conducted from the field and not just in medical facilities or even in homes. And the translators who provide services over the video translator network can work from home using consumer-grade videoconferencing technologies. All of this is possible once high-speed connectivity becomes universally available.

With these applications that can clearly benefit our lives in mind, the next question I often receive is what's next? What applications will be created once the next-generation of broadband networks are everywhere?

But I'm not sure if these are the right questions to ask.

Instead of heading out looking for the next killer app we should first consider how the applications listed above will be improved by broadband networks with higher capacity, better reliability, and lower latency.

Higher capacity networks will open up the ability to deliver higher quality video. So instead of video that's the size of a playing card or full-screen but low quality, high capacity broadband networks will enable the delivery of two-way HD video that can fill a big-screen TV.

More reliable networks will help insure that mission-critical applications like remote monitoring always work and never fail due to shoddy connectivity.

And networks with lower latency will make real-time communications feel more natural by not introducing any lag in between when people speak.

There undoubtedly will be a whole new class of applications that can take full advantage of the capacity, reliability, and low latency of next-generation broadband networks, but for now let's focus on equipping our entire healthcare system with the applications listed above and on putting the networks in place that can support their evolution into integral parts of our lives.

In terms of what we need from next-generation broadband networks to enable all these applications to establish themselves and evolve the answers simple: we need everyone to have access to the best broadband. We need broadband networks with limitless capacity so as demands increase so can the supply needed to support them. We need broadband networks that we can rely on to always work. We need broadband networks with low latency to enable as close to real-time delivery as possible.

And while the benefits of next-generation broadband to how we administer medical care are profound, they're only the tip of the iceberg.

Up next look forward to the Top Ten Broadband-Enabled Education Applications!