As U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius wrote in the April 12th Huffington Post piece Health Equity Can’t Wait, it is “a time to raise awareness about the well-documented health disparities that continue to affect racial and ethnic minorities.” One of the keys to reducing health disparities in the future is to improve access, not just traditional access to a doctor’s office, but to medical professionals through modern advances in telemedicine (the delivery of health-related services and information via telecommunications technologies) and mHealth (health care and medicine performed over mobile devices like smartphones and tablets).

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Foodditive

If you’re child suffers from a food allergy, or you follow a restrictive diet, then take this app to the supermarket with you. It allows you to check information on certain food additives and how they will affect you, according to a number of diet sensitivities, such as coeliac disease, gluten, vegetarian, vegan and even halal. It contains a comprehensive glossary on the main additives in an easy-to-use guide.

Allergy Free Entertaining

Throw a dinner party and the odds are several of your guests will have a food allergy, intolerance, or preference for certain foods. This app lets you find allergy-free alternatives to cater for everyone including those who are allergic to nuts, egg, soy or gluten intolerant. You’ll find helpful cooking advice, recipes and even a list of wines to match your meals.

Epicurious

This app lets you choose from more than 28,000 tried-and-tested recipes, collated from foodie publications such as Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazine, among others. Browse the popular recipe collections, search for a particular recipe, or find healthy quick and easy meals in a flash.

Alcohol Aware

This app keeps a daily track of the amount of alcoholic drinks you’re imbibing, as well as the effects those glasses of wine will have on your waistline. Obviously, if you can’t focus on your screen to input the info, then
you’ve had enough.

Smoothie Recipes

This app contains 110 delicious and healthy smoothie recipes. There’s even suggestions for making your own mocktails, and best of all, calorie content is included.

Fitness Builder

Whether you’re starting an exercise routine for the first time, or just want some workout inspiration, Fitness Builder can help. This app lets you choose from an impressive library of more than 5,600 exercise images and videos, or, you can even ask a personal trainer for helpful advice.

Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by My Fitness Pal

Enter your age, gender, weight loss goals and this clever app will help you reach your weight loss goals in your requested time frame. It lets you keep a food diary, tracks the amount of exercise you do, and after all your hard work it tells you how much room for manoeuvre (such as a glass of wine) you have left at the end of the day.

Wellness Diary Beta

This handy app helps you track practically every area about your health: what you eat, how much you move, your weight, stress levels, even your sleeping patterns. Plus it gives you useful information around these health areas. This app is still under development, so if you feel there is room for improvement, Nokia is open to your feedback.

These apps are just a small sampling of an incredible trove of resources available on our mobile handsets.

To distribute the funds, the FCC plans to run what are known as “reverse auctions.” This means that the lowest-bidder in designated communities will receive government funds for setting up service, but not without conditions. An emphasis is being placed on rolling out new services as fast as possible, meaning winner bidders will have two years to install 3G services and three
years for the more advanced 4G services.

While these actions by the FCC are certainly taking a step in the right direction, $300 million is just a drop in the bucket. The true costs of expanding the nation’s wireless infrastructure will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. According to The Daily Yonder, wireless companies will invest about $26 billion in their networks in 2012 alone.

A variety of factors have contributed to the lack of Internet access in sparsely populated areas of America: economic fundamentals, an insufficient customer base or simple technical difficulties all complicate expanding the nation’s wireless footprint to these populations. Regardless of the reason, every American deserves the opportunity to access a reliable online connection. It’s about time rural America has that option, too.

Broadband internet connections have laid the groundwork for continue innovation in the healthcare field.  Expectant and new mothers can receive tips on prenatal care, baby health and parenting via text message. Apps have been developed that help monitor patients via smartphones and tablets. Emergency medical responders can wirelessly receive a patient’s health history or transmit vital statistics and test results to emergency room personnel before even arriving at the hospital. These initiatives are just a taste of what will allow rural patients to be treated and monitored at home, but they all hinge on access to a wireless broadband network.

One roadblock impeding the expansion of these technologies is a lack of sufficient wireless coverage in many areas of the country, as well as access to high speed advanced services . Carriers are investing heavily in the infrastructure that supports the wireless networks, but carriers need additional wireless spectrum to handle the increased data traffic.  To combat this, Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to work with broadcasters to identify any who are willing to auction the spectrum they hold in exchange for a portion of the profits. Unfortunately, the process of re-allocating and auctioning this spectrum can take years, so it is imperative the FCC move as fast as possible to get this spectrum to market.

Wireless broadband has the capacity to revolutionize healthcare, but rural America will only benefit from this revolution if wireless providers are given the spectrum they need to bring services to these outlying communities. The FCC should do everything in its power to bring rural America the quality wireless service it needs and deserves.

In some areas of the nation, the influx of mobile broadband users has exceeded wireless carrier’s network capacity and has manifested itself in dropped calls and slow downloads. “I get more dropped calls now than I did before, and it takes a while for my videos to download. I think the airwaves are just too crowded,” said Wilson Einess, a 34-year-old hairdresser in a recent Orlando Sentinel article.

These capacity constraints do not just inhibit usage by the average consumer, but negatively impacts educational applications as well.

“In any given classroom, you have 40 to 50 students with about 100 devices in the room, and they can’t connect [to the Internet] to conduct their research. The networks are getting very crowded and very noisy,” said Eileen M. Smith, director of the E2I Creative Studio at the University of Central Florida, in the same Orlando Sentinel article. “Increased bandwidth means we could have our students working more closely together over the Internet — whenever and wherever they are.”

Both job-seekers and the business community alike will also benefit from the spectrum auction. CTIA, the trade association for the wireless industry, estimates that the auction could result in as many as 771,000 new jobs could be created nationwide by 2016. The expansion of mobile broadband is also looked at as a platform for innovation. Also speaking to the Orlando Sentinel, Peter Stanforth, chief technology officer of Spectrum Bridge, a company that enables wireless networks, thinks access to additional airwaves will “change the way businesses use wireless, and create new types of businesses and services.” He also believes the increased spectrum could spur local mobile-related businesses, as well as innovations in Bluetooth technology that allow devices to communicate wirelessly.

As innovation continues to thrive in this country, it is more important than ever that wireless carriers have the airwaves they need to support the many useful applications that are made possible through wireless technologies.

Outdated regulations that were created for a rotary phone world have been holding back technological advancements and investment in newer technologies like wireless broadband. According to an analysis by Connected Nation, a seven percent increase in broadband adoption would result in 18,000 new jobs in Mississippi. Eliminating the requirement that incumbent telecommunications companies invest in traditional phone service prior to investing in state-of-the-art technologies like wireless broadband is critical to achieving this kind of job growth.

By signing H.B. 825, Governor Bryant has made the state of Mississippi a more attractive place for companies to invest additional dollars and will certainly lead to more broadband adoption and new jobs in the Magnolia state.

The current law was written years ago when consumers had very few, if any, choices regarding their telecommunications needs. Today, that’s no longer the case. More than 35 percent of Mississippians do not even use traditional landline service; instead they rely on wireless for their communications needs. Yet because current law requires some providers to invest in traditional technologies first, scarce resources are taken away from investment in advanced communications technology that Mississippians want and our economy needs.

According to an analysis by Connected Nation, a seven percent increase in broadband adoption would result in 18,000 new jobs in Mississippi. Eliminating the requirement that incumbent telecommunications companies invest in traditional phone service prior to investing in state-of-the-art technologies like wireless broadband is critical.  This would unleash millions of added dollars in investment and lead to more broadband adoption.

Across the country, states are looking for ways to attract investment and add jobs. Many states, especially in the southeast, are reforming their telecommunications laws as a way of doing so. Voters overwhelmingly support getting rid of red tape that holds the economy back. Mississippi’s current telecommunications laws would clearly apply.

Governor Bryant, we respectfully ask for your strong consideration to sign House Bill 825.

Posted: 04/12/2012 11:50 am

In January of 2011, President Obama’s vision for the State of our Union included a bold objective of digital inclusion that could help virtually all Americans more fully participate in our connected economy. “Within the next five years,” he pledged, “we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans.”

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The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently released a report indicating that spectrum currently held and utilized by various federal government agencies would be perfect for commercial use. Senator Warner hopes that in the future, Congress will work closely with stakeholder agencies to accurately identify relocation costs to clear as much
of the valuable bands as possible.

President Obama and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have been pushing for more commercial access to spectrum, yet Senator Warner does not see a long-term plan to manage the finite resource. Without such a plan, the U.S. risks losing its ability to innovate and may strangle the very individuals fueling economic growth. Wireless carriers are starved for spectrum, and the article makes it clear we can longer ignore the looming shortage.

By Sen. Mark Warner

Let’s face it: Spectrum is a dry topic. Few members of Congress
spend much time thinking about it. These days, though, we all spend a lot of
time talking about jobs. And every mobile technology and most major startup
companies in the last 20 years could not have taken off without the use of
spectrum in some form. Groupon uses e-mail to revolutionize bargain shopping. Square has pioneered the use of mobile devices to accept credit
card payments. The fact is, the companies that are growing and creating jobs
are those companies that successfully leverage technology to create a better
consumer experience.

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