More Americans are using cell phones for health care info and to renew prescriptions.

Broadband-based telemedicine is helping villagers in India with affordable health care.

"A major benefit offered by telemedicine is the avoidance of travel, by patients, their carers and health care professionals," wrote the authors of a recent international study.

In a forceful op-ed in Monday's Baltimore Sun, former U.S. Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume spoke out on the particular need of poor and minorities for expanded broadband.

According to the Benton Foundation, the journal ModernHealthcare.com reports that most rural hospitals have not significantly progressed in their use of IT.

Among the people who benefit most from innovative online technologies are the disabled. The profoundly deaf can communicate as easily by email as the general population. People with mobility problems can without difficulty conference via Skype or other video service. But according to one estimate, only half of people with disabilities have adopted broadband.

The number of hospitals implementing intensive computerized record keeping and management has increased significantly in the last year. Health and Hospitals Network rates hospitals "based on progress in adoption, implementation and use of information technology." Most Wired Hospitals have moved further than hospitals overall toward computerization.

Broadband-based telemedicine can improve the quality of care and lower costs — particularly by the use of electronic health records (EHRs). Not only can these make records more accessible, but they can assure that patients in need can be closely and constantly monitored.

As the first Baby Boomers turn 65 this year, they join the 13 percent of Americans that age or older. And that cohort is growing. While communities struggle to find the funding and infrastructure to cope with the aging, one area is particularly at risk — rural America.

Electronic health records, social media, and mobile tools are providing a new line of defense in the fight against preventive disease. New technologies are making access to patient histories, support groups, and health resources more available than ever before.