FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Program
The FCC Rural Health Care Pilot program is an enhanced funding initiative intended to help public and non-profit health care providers construct state- and region-wide broadband networks to provide telehealth and telemedicine services throughout the nation. The program will fund up to 85% of the costs of constructing those networks, as well as the costs of advanced telecommunications and information services that will ride over these networks.
NLR and its member Regional Optical Networks (RONs) are pleased to be a part of this program as it is one of the initial thrusts of
the NLR-RONs’ National Healthcare Delivery Initiative. The NLR-RONs project plans to connect and integrate health care facilities into the RONs and then to connect them to the NLR backbone via the RONs. Read more about the NLR-RONs National Healthcare Delivery Initiative
.
Successful implementation of this plan will set the stage for collaboration amongst the healthcare facilities, university medical centers as well as enable remote delivery of specialized health care applications throughout the state and region. When connected to the NLR backbone these capabilities will be extended to resources across the country. The end goal is to enable an individual citizen in need of healthcare to have access to the specific expertise and treatment regardless of that person’s physical proximity to the resources and services.
Together, NLR, the RONs, the state and regional healthcare industry and strategic corporate participants are uniquely positioned to partner in this arena over the long-term by participating in a broad array of healthcare initiatives on both a regional and national scale. The intersection of healthcare and advanced networks will provide interoperability and increased efficiency.