Thanks to Ann Higgins for sending a recent article from Government Health IT where President Elect Obama says that modernizing U.S. hospitals would be part of a major effort to finance an upgrade of the broadband infrastructure of the U.S., which he said has fallen to 15th in the world in its rate of adoption. (That’s a quote from the article, not necessarily from Obama.)

As the article points out it’s a move that will save lives as well as jobs. It is partnered with education as a strong base upon which to build – which makes a ton of sense to me.

Ann sent it to me in light of the presentation from the Blandin Broadband conference by the Broadband Task force where Chuck Taylor (Task Force Member) talked about the importance of capacity and widely available direct access to broadband capacity for development of delivery of efficient and effective health care services.

It will be interesting to see in light of the new Administration how the Feds can support State and local plans for broadband, how the Local and State can support the Feds and who will be leading the effort!