[The following is a report on the new House NREN Applications Bill taken from the EFFector Online Volume 5 No. 7 4/30/1993 which is a Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I have extracted the items which address health care issues. PK] Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 16:11:11 -0400 EFFector Online Volume 5 No. 7 4/30/1993 editors@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062P9424 by Andrew Blau EFF Associate for Telecommunications Policy On April 21, Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) introduced legislation to create computer and networking applications to serve the education, library, and health care communities, and to promote access to government information. The bill, H.R. 1757, significantly expands on similar provisions found in last year's "Information Infrastructure and Technology Act" (often referred to as "Gore II," then-Senator Gore's follow-up to his NREN bill, the High Performance Computing Act ("HPCA")), and the Senate bill to promote U.S. competitiveness, S. 4. Boucher, who chairs the House Science Subcommittee which oversees the NSF, has held oversight hearings on the development of the NREN program at which EFF Chairman Mitch Kapor testified. Many of EFF's suggestions, and the suggestions of EFF's partners in the education, library, and health care sectors, have been included in this legislation. Highlights include: *a substantial broadening of the focus of NREN to accelerate progress toward "a universally accessible high-capacity and high speed data network for the nation"; *a significant commitment to public libraries, K-12 schools, and support for hardware purchases; *the creation and inclusion of local 'civic networks' of local libraries, schools, and local and state government offices, which would be connected to the Internet; *an emphasis on promoting access to government information; and *a codification of the distinction between research and production networks. This bill also shifts away from the manufacturing focus of the earlier bills; it has no provisions for manufacturing applications at all. [stuff deleted] EFF will make a copy of the full text of the bill in our ftp archives (ftp.eff.org). Section-by-section review: ************************* [stuff deleted ] Sec. 309 outlines health care applications. This is a substantially expanded version of S. 4's health care section. The lead agency is shifted from the National Library of Medicine to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is to implement it through the NLM, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control. H.R. 1757 also splits health care applications into three subsections. Besides clinical information systems, which repeats S. 4's six health care provisions for clinicians, H.R. 1757 adds two sections of entirely new provisions: health information to public, and health delivery systems and population data sets for epidemiology. The section authorizes 24, 70, 82, 94, and 94 million dollars ($364 million) over the next five years. Applications for health information to the public include: consumer- oriented, interactive, multimedia materials for health promotion and distribution of such materials to public access points, such as community health and human service agencies, schools and public libraries; interactive, multimedia materials to assist patients in deciding among health care options; interfaces to allow non specialists ease of access and use; and the means to provide customized preventative and treatment information to non specialists. Applications for health delivery systems and population data sets include: networks and software for communication among local public and private health and human service providers, e.g., health centers, clinics, entitlement offices, and school based clinics to enable social service providers to deliver coordinated services; access for health care providers to current clinic-based health promotion and disease prevention recommendations and two-way links with prevention specialists at state and local health departments; and database technologies to help clinicians diagnose, treat, and provide preventative information to patients and facilitate the gathering of systematic population data sets in order to measure treatments and national health trends. ============================================================= EFFector Online is published by The Electronic Frontier Foundation 666 Pennsylvania Ave. SE Washington, DC 20003 USA Phone: +1 202 544 9237 FAX: +1 202 547 5481 Internet Address: eff@eff.org Coordination, production and shipping by Cliff Figallo, EFF Online Communications Coordinator (fig@eff.org) To be included in EFF's email mailing list, send request to: eff@eff.org Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. 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