New AT&T ForHealth Practice Accelerates Pursuit of $34 Billion Healthcare I.T. Market With Suite of Industry Solutions

DALLAS, Nov. 4, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T* today announced a new practice area and portfolio of specialized services that will harness innovative technology to help improve patient care and reduce medical costs nationwide.

The practice area, called AT&T ForHealth(SM), will accelerate delivery of innovative wireless, networked, and cloud-based solutions specifically for the healthcare industry.  Examples of healthcare solutions that use AT&T's technology include:

• Medicine bottles that remind patients to take pills on schedule;
• Devices that monitor patients' heart levels from the comfort of their homes;
• Audio/video links that can replace the need for an in-person visit to the doctor.

The U.S. market for healthcare I.T. solution spending is $33.9 billion in 2010 and estimated to grow 24% over the next four years, according to IDC, an industry analyst firm.(1) AT&T said it generated approximately $4 billion in revenue from healthcare industry businesses such as hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, suppliers and physicians in 2009.

Healthcare leaders said AT&T's focused expansion will usher in many benefits, including reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary medical tests and improving care by enabling providers to transfer electronic health records in a highly secure manner. The American Hospital Association has exclusively endorsed a suite of AT&T services that enable the sharing of health information and applications.

"AT&T's focused healthcare strategy has put healthcare I.T. innovation on the fast track, benefiting the health of patients across the nation," said Lac V. Tran, senior vice president and chief information officer and associate dean of Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. Tran is a member of AT&T's Healthcare Executive Advisory Council, comprised of top healthcare leaders who advise AT&T about innovative products and services that can enhance productivity and improve operations in the healthcare community.

"AT&T continues to make great strides in healthcare," said Mike Sapien, principal analyst, Enterprise Practice, U.S., at Ovum. "We're glad to see tangible evidence of Telehealth business through AT&T's solid platforms to expand advanced and mobile services beyond network and managed services."

"We believe the healthcare industry is at a 'tipping point' for fundamental change that will improve patients' care and lead to better healthcare outcomes," said John Stankey, President and CEO, AT&T Business Solutions. "Networking solutions, using cloud-based, mobility and telepresence technologies, can help the overall industry deliver better care to people while driving costs out of the system."

"Today's announcements signal an exciting new era where our technology and smart networks can help improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and contribute to a healthier world," said Dan Walsh, who was appointed to lead AT&T's ForHealth practice area. Walsh is a senior vice president at AT&T.

Walsh announced the following services/solutions currently under development:

mHealth Services – AT&T's mHealth Services are a new set of I.T. solutions for healthcare that combine mobility technologies, devices, connectivity, and applications to help drive down medical costs and deliver improved patient outcomes.  AT&T's mHealth Services will be focused on helping healthcare institutions and patients manage disease, take the appropriate medicine, receive home care, manage weight loss, and monitor wellness programs.

Cloud-based Services – A new set of cloud-based, medical image archive applications and security services which will permit healthcare providers to share clinical data in a highly-secure manner, scaled to handle the huge bandwidth demands driven by live video, images and medical records. Solutions planned to be delivered by AT&T on-demand and "as-a-service" include managed hosting, storage, security and consulting services.

Pilot Programs – AT&T will work with multiple customers to trial healthcare solutions powered by its mobile and networking technologies:

Healthcare Community Online – All of AT&T's planned offers will be available as stand-alone networking solutions or can also be integrated with AT&T's flagship health information exchange offer, AT&T Healthcare Community Online. This industry leading cloud-based service permits providers within a healthcare system to easily exchange health information and share applications in a highly secure manner. The solution helps to reduce or eliminate duplicate tests and unnecessary costs and enables providers to comply with requirements for use of electronic health records and enhance clinical workflow, ultimately improving the quality of care for patients.

The planned AT&T mobility and cloud-based networking solutions and pilot programs announced today build upon a robust portfolio that includes:

Industry/Customer Recognition

On October 18, the American Hospital Association (AHA) announced it had exclusively endorsed AT&T's Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) services, recognizing the strength of AT&T Healthcare Community Online and other voice, data networking and wireless services that AT&T provides to enable healthcare industry participants to easily exchange health information and applications.

Customers

AT&T is working with a number of customers to deploy healthcare solutions. Examples include:

• AT&T is providing Houston-based eCardio Diagnostics with machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless data and mobile connectivity for near real-time, remote monitoring of cardiac patients, allowing them to recover at home rather than spend additional time in the hospital.
• AT&T is working with the University of California to create the country's largest telehealth network. More than 800 facilities throughout California will be linked through the California Telehealth Network by the end of next year.
• West Tennessee Healthcare, one of the largest public, not-for-profit healthcare systems in Tennessee, has recently joined with AT&T to implement AT&T Healthcare Community Online (HCO) throughout the 17 counties the system serves. "We have already made significant progress toward accessing critical patient information from within the hospitals, doctors' offices and our many affiliated licensed healthcare providers in remote areas throughout our large footprint," said Jeff Frieling, CIO at West Tennessee Healthcare. "Accurate and timely data sharing is an enormous challenge for us, but the HCO portal should dramatically improve this situation."

Learn more information about AT&T ForHealth.

(1) Source: IDC Worldwide Healthcare IT Spending Guide, 2008-2013, Version 2, March 2010

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

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