Net Neutrality Implications For HIT
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Why Healthcare providers should be concerned about the Net Neutrality Debate.
President Obama recently urged the FCC to establish strict net neutrality rules to ensure the free flow of content across the information superhighway, asserting that such regulations should guarantee “neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online,” according to The New York Times.
The issue revolves around the control of high-data usage by video and other traffic moving across an undersized network, which ultimately dilutes performance levels. The FCC is expected to rule on the issue within the next few months.
To date, the issue of net neutrality is probably flying below the radar on the screens of most healthcare IT executives. But the issue does have the potential to be of concern to the development and success of healthcare exchanges and interoperability. In particular, telehealth and electronic record data exchange could potentially see damaging blows if internet service providers are allowed to create different transmission channels at unique pricing levels, according to Modern Healthcare.
“I don't think people realize how much net neutrality can affect health services,” Mark Gaynor, associate professor of health management and policy at St. Louis University and a long-time advocate for net neutrality told Modern Healthcare.
A Health Affairs blog post at further argues Healthcare must join the network neutrality debate to ensure the Internet continues to serve the public good, writing, “Network neutrality impacts the triple aim – improving quality and the patient experience, reducing costs, and improving population health – because virtually all of the information collected in these areas is transmitted through some type of Internet service provider.
“Leaders in healthcare must understand that how and when they access the Internet may shape the flow and type of information transmitted to them and even their patients. How will NN affect health care delivery and innovation to improve patient care while reducing costs? Does a user own his health data or does the network?”
Part of the net neutrality debate has included the concept of prioritizing and excepting certain types of information through regulation. According to the Health Affairs blog, “Health information deserves access to the fast lane. However, the FCC should insure a neutral approach based on categories of service rather than vendors prioritizing their own applications. This means that if the end user pays for a certain quality of service from the network (e.g. speed and delay in the network), they should receive that quality of service from the network provider from all content providers.”
Steve Kraus, a partner at venture capitalist firm Bessemer Venture Partners, told Modern Healthcare that “The whole premise of telemedicine would fall down” if startups suffer lagged performance. He also argued the net neutrality debate is particularly relevant to healthcare, since speed is an issue in providing care to patients, and because of the size of data files healthcare transmits.