New bill to foster mobile health innovation

A new bill would foster innovation in mobile health technology. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) introduced H.R. 6626, The Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act (HIMTA), that would introduce marketplace incentives, challenge grants and increased workforce retraining.

“As we continue to improve our healthcare system, technology can and should play a prominent role in achieving better care for Americans,” said Honda in a release. “Investments, development and adoption of technologies remain stagnant. Why have the principles of Silicon Valley, which I represent--competition, innovation, and entrepreneurship--not fully manifested themselves in the healthcare information technology space?  This bill gets us closer to that space.”

The bill addresses several of the barriers preventing entrepreneurs from entering the healthcare market. “There is also a lack of an established marketplace for new technologies and a lack of trained workers to handle the implementation and use of these technologies. This bill begins to bridge these gaps.” 

The HIMTA bill focuses on the following:
Removing wireless health barriers: The bill establishes an Office of Wireless Health at the FDA that will coordinate with other governmental agencies and private industry to provide recommendations to the FDA commissioner on how to develop and maintain a consistent, reasonable and predictable regulatory framework on wireless health issues. This office will not expand the mandate or responsibilities of the FDA, but seek to better clarify and simplify existing regulations while providing expertise. 

The bill also would seek to establish a mHealth developer support program at the Department of Health and Human Services to help mobile application developers build their devices in line with current privacy regulations. This program will provide support resources such as a national hotline, an educational website and a yearly report that will help translate the wide array of privacy guidelines into common English.

Developing new technologies: To foster greater interest in developing new health technologies, the bill mandates the creation of a prize program and small innovator challenge grants that incentivize risk-taking and attract outside investment in order to stimulate new approaches. The Disruptive Technologies Prize Program creates a commission of private industry, patient safety/privacy advocates, medical professionals and government officials to recommend three major areas of the health IT space that have not seen enough innovation. It then creates a competitive prize program to attract private investment in these three areas, thereby fostering a competitive atmosphere to create the game-changing technologies of tomorrow. The program mandates that any submission substantially improve quality of care, reduce costs and be market viable. Additionally, the challenge grant program provides grants to small innovators working in garages and home offices and the critical seed funding necessary to make their ideas a reality.

Creating an innovation marketplace: In recognition of the fact that lack of capital is one of the biggest barriers to purchasing health IT, the bill creates a low-interest small business loan program to clinics and physician offices for the purchasing of new health IT products and services. It also creates a tax incentive program that allows medical care providers to deduct costs related to non-EHR healthcare IT.

Workforce retraining: The bill establishes two-year grants to assist providers in retraining their employees into new positions that use health IT.

Read the entire bill.