The ATA’s Digital Infrastructure Score and mapping tool reveals the true state of digital readiness across U.S. communities, allowing stakeholders to make more precise investments, build stronger patient engagement, and improve access and health equity outcomes.
WASHINGTON, DC – The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) launched its enhanced Digital Infrastructure Score, a first-of-its-kind, data-driven benchmarking tool to measure how well U.S. communities are equipped for digital access.
The ATA’s new Digital Infrastructure Score and mapping tool highlights key infrastructure variables – including broadband access, internet speeds, device availability, and affordability – and applies relative weights to the combined data that reflect real-world adoption of virtual care and digital health services. The expanded platform features a heatmap interface showing differences by ZIP code or county, with drill-down views to identify which factors impact scores to help drive analysis, grant applications, or policy planning.
“As the nation continues to grapple with an unrelenting pressure on key hospital infrastructure in rural and urban America alike, digital solutions will become increasingly critical in facilitating access to key services,” said David Smith, Founder & CEO, Third Horizon Strategies and advisor on this project. “The Digital Infrastructure Score provides a first-of-its-kind comprehensive review of the various elements needed for digital solutions as physical access points change.”
Key Benefits of the ATA’s Digital Infrastructure Score
The ATA’s Digital Infrastructure Score and mapping tool reveals the true state of digital readiness across U.S. communities, assisting hospital system and health plan executives, public health administrators, policymakers and other stakeholders to make more precise investments, build stronger patient engagement, and improve access and health equity outcomes. These tools are also especially useful to help rural states and communities plan for health transformation by:
- Identifying the readiness of communities to adopt virtual care and digital health services
- Guiding necessary broadband investments
- Supporting policy evaluation and funding proposals with credible data
- Enabling multi-sector collaboration using a shared evidence base
Access the ATA’s Digital Infrastructure Score (DIS) and mapping tool here.
“By building on the original frameworks developed by our CEO advisory group, we were able to incorporate additional data sets, develop enhanced data visualization tools, and improve the design interface and user experience for these tools,” said Ann Mond Johnson, CEO of the ATA. “Our Digital Infrastructure Score and Mapping tool makes digital readiness visible and empowers health, policy, and community leaders to make smarter, more informed decisions to for the deployment of digital health services.
“We are grateful to our CEO Advisory Group on Expanding Access to Healthcare, co-chaired by Kristi Henderson, DNP, Yasmine Winkler and Ron Wyatt, MD, for their forward-thinking work to advance a framework, roadmap, and other relevant materials for addressing gaps in care pathways,” Mond Johnson added.
The ATA received a grant from the Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) to enhance its Digital Infrastructure Score (DIS) and mapping tools.
About the ATA
As the only organization completely focused on advancing telehealth and digital health, the American Telemedicine Association is committed to ensuring that everyone has access to safe, affordable, and appropriate care when and where they need it, enabling the system to do more good for more people. The ATA represents a broad and inclusive member network of leading healthcare delivery systems, academic institutions, life sciences companies, technology solution providers and payers, as well as partner organizations and alliances, working to advance industry adoption of technology enabled care, promote responsible policy, advocate for government and market normalization, and provide education and resources to help integrate virtual care into emerging value-based delivery models.
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