According to an announcement from the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC has just adopted rules requiring wireless carriers and certain other text messaging providers to send an automatic “bounce-back” text message to consumers who try to text 911 where text-to-911 service is not available.
The FCC says the measure is designed to protect the public by substantially reducing the risk of consumers sending a text message to 911 and mistakenly believing that 911 authorities have received it.
“Instead, consumers will receive an immediate response that text-to-911 is not supported and to contact emergency services by another means, such as by making a voice call or using telecommunications relay services (if deaf, hard of hearing, or speech disabled) to access 911,” the announcement reads.
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Baylor College of Medicine researchers believe that mobile sensor technology could prove instrumental in helping recovering drug addicts stay clean.
Last week at the American Telemedicine Association conference, a psychologist at the school explained how he’s using the Zephyr BioHarness wireless vital signals monitor to closely watch and track cardiovascular and respiratory changes in cocaine users.
Developed for the military, first responders and athletes, the BioHarness is a chest strap with a battery-powered sensor that monitors a person’s heart rate, breathing rate and other vital signs.
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Mobile health technology is showing promising results in Brazil, where remote monitoring of patients is becoming more commonplace.
Targeting primarily impoverished urban areas where access to health care is limited, mobile health technology is already cutting health care spending.
That’s according to a recent study conducted by the New Cities Foundation. The underlying research looked at the effects of bringing state-of-the-art health care diagnostic tools to sick and elderly residents of a particular slum.
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Chief among the arguments in favor of expanding the adoption of telemedicine and mHealth technology is the significant reduction in cost that would be achieved for both patients and healthcare providers.
A new infographic from TopMastersInHealthCare.com clearly points to the increasingly expensive nature of modern healthcare and corroborates many claims about the multitude of ways in which new technologies can ease these crushing financial burdens.
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Although cutting edge technologies and software-based solutions continue to exert profoundly positive influence on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of modern healthcare, a stubborn reliance upon outdated technology is costing hospitals billions of dollars each year.
Surprisingly, “archaic communication technology” like pagers are among the biggest culprits of modern waste.
Physicians and nurses working in hospitals waste an average of 46 minutes a day when they use beepers to exchange information about patients, rather than modern alternatives like texting on smartphones, according to a new study by technology research firm Ponemon Institute.
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Based on the presented findings of the most recent National Progress Report and Safe-Rx Rankings by Surescripts, electronic prescriptions are becoming a fixture of modern medicine.
“This report confirms that e-prescribing’s success is changing health care by demonstrating that Health IT has become a critical component for the efficient delivery of medicine and cost-effective patient treatments,” the report reads.
E-prescribing, Surescripts affirms, continues to lead the way for full utilization of clinical information sharing throughout health care.
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According to the latest data and corresponding projections from ABI Research, the market for disposable wireless Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) sensors within professional healthcare is growing.
Although ABI concedes that today’s market is still in its “earliest stages,” the key foundations to support adoption are now in place.
By 2018, ABI estimates, close to 5 million disposable sensors will be shipped even though MBAN sensors will have still barely penetrated the addressable market.
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