Now that the broadband markets are moving in the right direction focus from access to the actual broadband services and applications is taking place.
It is important for infrastructure and service developments to proceed in tandem. To use the new and exciting services that we are hearing about, we need better broadband access, but if the services aren’t actually available broadband users will question why they need all that capacity – a typical chicken and egg problem.

There are three key areas of broadband applications:
• The delivery of healthcare and aged care services
• Education services
• Smart energy (and water meters) for more efficient usage of energy and water.

Although our state politicians and bureaucrats are still reluctant, smart grids projects are well and truly underway. There is now an industry workgroup, working with the government, the regulators and the rest of the industry to push the project further.

Video monitoring services are creating a massive change in the delivery of health and aged care services.

However, the major barrier is not the lack of technology – nor is it the lack of broadband. The problem lies in the fact that our healthcare administration systems are not suited to the delivery of such services.We are getting data from all over the world about the savings attached to these new services. Estimates are between 15% and 25% of the total national healthcare budgets. The technology exists; the applications can be developed; but the ‘system’ actively prevents these developments from taking place.

Hundreds of billions of e-health dollars are spent on proprietary administrative systems in hospitals and elsewhere, while the world is moving towards web-based services aimed at the delivery of e-health services to the people who need the services – the patients – rather than to the administrations and health bureaucracies.

While video consultations with clinicians are a victim of this policy the definition has broader impacts. Remote patient monitoring systems that gather patient’s vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate etc are being deployed but principally using narrowband or dialup services. Unfortunately, the ability to use tele-consultations via video, in conjunction with the very useful data gathered using telemetry, to manage a patient’s condition is stymied by the narrow definition of a consultation and patients are being denied access to better healthcare services.

This is why it is so important that the decision-makers within the healthcare system look overseas, where countries are three to five years ahead of us in relation to broadband infrastructure. They need to open their eyes and see what the broadband possibilities are – this will most certainly lead them to understand this would save even more public money.

Over the years the medical service has become much more front-line. For example there are now a large number of services aimed at, for instance, pregnant women, young mums and their babies, revalidation, exercise, self-help etc.

Just imagine the opportunities for e-health delivery around these services. Mums can use the web camera to show her baby to a nurse, who can then advise her. Patients can download self-help videos or meet up with each other through web cameras. Elderly relatives can be monitored by their families, as well as by video nurses.

The technologies are there, the infrastructure is there, so what are we waiting for? Once again, it is the heath system that is blocking progress. It will take years to get these changes through the system.

In another interesting development, in the USA and Japan in particular, there is now an enormous demand for e-health services from the affluent ‘worried well”. This cohort is currently spending billions on health services – from alternative medicine, to alternative life theories and coaches, training, books, videos, etc.

These are the first people to implement e-health services in their homes. They are also the people who are setting up web camera links with aged relatives.

This is a clear indication that there is a commercial use for these e-health services. By deregulating issues such as ‘consultation’, governments can allow private industry to develop these new e-health services. Clearly, government has a role to ensure protect citizens from inappropriate or dangerous services but not to stop developments of innovative new technologies, as their current policy does.