According to an official FCC blog post, the Director of Healthcare Initiatives will promote communications technologies that improve health care programs, facilitate medical facilities' access to wireless spectrum, and ensure open connectivity for health care facilities. The director will also be responsible for launching a pilot program to explore the possibility of expanding health care networks to skilled nursing facilities. The announcement comes days after the announcement of a new fund dedicated to overhauling broadband services for health care.
The new FCC official will work closely with the mobile Health Task Force, and federal agencies including Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
The FCC's new website will provide a central hub for all of the agency's health care related projects. “By recruiting a Director of Health Care Initiatives and launching the FCC Health website, we hope to accomplish even more, with greater coordination within the agency, more community engagement, and more efficient collaboration with our external partners,” the FCC announcement reads.
