STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
Re: Expanding Broadband Access and Spectrum Availability for Healthcare 
(January 31, 2013)
Telemedicine in all its forms—mHealth, remote monitoring, and telehealth—is no longer 
a dream from the distant future.  It is here and now, and it is an integral part of modern medicine.    
The numbers tell this story very clearly.  The American Telemedicine Association 
estimates that more than 10 million Americans directly benefited from telemedicine services last 
year.  This is double what it was only three years ago.  More than 5 million Americans had their 
medical images read remotely last year and 1 million Americans currently benefit from remote 
cardiac monitoring for implantable devices.  In hospitals, a full 10 percent of all intensive care 
unit beds now use telemedicine in some form.  Add to these numbers the tens of thousands of 
mobile health applications available on smartphones—and you quickly get the picture.  
Technology is changing the nature of medicine and the way it is practiced in communities in 
urban areas, rural areas, and everything in between.  
As we have heard today, the Commission has already contributed to the success of 
telemedicine—by across the board increasing access to wireless and broadband networks that 
support a range of new health IT applications.  But the best is yet to come.  Anytime, anywhere 
healthcare technology is bound to be the foundation of medicine in the digital age.  
Yet there will still be challenges—some internal to this agency, others at its margins.  So 
going forward we must work with our federal partners at the Food and Drug Administration and 
the Department of Health and Human Services to make sure that our efforts are always in 
concert.  Moreover, we should strive to make sure that digital age care is not fenced by state 
borders and old rules premised on local paperwork.  To this end, it is important to study how the 
Servicemembers’ Telemedicine and E-Health Portability Act has helped streamline rules and 
foster the use of telemedicine across the country—improving healthcare and reducing cost.  
Thank you to the Wireline Competition Bureau and Office of Engineering and 
Technology for your work on this presentation—and for your upcoming efforts on all the good 
things telemedicine ahead.