Health IT

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal policymakers enacted a series of legislative and regulatory measures to expand access to telehealth services. Congress recently extended many of these changes for two years in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 (H.R. 2617). However, policymakers should permanently extend these temporary measures to ensure that medical providers can continue to offer care to patients remotely after the extension ends.

Policymakers should both make permanent many of the COVID-19 era policies that allow medical providers to see patients remotely and enact provisions allowing for the practice of telemedicine over state lines. However, policymakers should also take further steps to ensure that telehealth providers offer and abide by the same standard of care as in-person treatment.

Stephen Ezell will be speaking at the James Madison Institute’s Florida Tech & Innovation 2022 Summit in Coral Gables, Florida on a panel discussing “Innovations and the Future of Healthcare.”

University researchers compiled qualitative data from interviews with 21 nursing home administrators and clinicians across 16 facilities and found that care providers reported a number of improved outcomes.

Stephen Ezell presented to the UN Commission on Social Development on Lessons Learned from the Use of Digital Technologies to Promote Healthy Aging in the Era of COVID-19.

ITIF's Center for Data Innovation hosted a discussion about what the healthcare sector needs to create a positive impact and increase innovation using AI.

The Center for Data Innovation welcomes the goals of the EHDS initiative and agrees that adopting measures to enable better data exchange will facilitate artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled healthcare applications in the EU and allow firms to pursue economies of scale across EU markets.

If Washington wants to show voters that government is doing something more than simply saying no or being ideologically dug in, then lawmakers and the administration should work to advance a set of actionable technology policy measures that would grow the U.S. economy.

People have been working on digital transformation of health care for decades, but the COVID pandemic has added urgency to the challenge. This is creating a window of opportunity to reinvent how the health care system works.

ITIF hosted a video webinar to discuss the rapid changes that have occurred in telehealth, their implications for patients and providers, and the actions policymakers still need to take to unlock the full potential of the technology.