Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released long-awaited rules pertaining to Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), which was passed by Congress in 2015. The 2,200-page rule is intended to provide the foundation for the future of the Medicare reimbursement system. ACT’s Connected Health Initiative (CHI) submitted extensive comments with CMS advocating for the rules to leverage the power of telehealth solutions. In response to the rules released by CMS, Morgan Reed, president of ACT’s Connected Health [...]

Last night, the Department of Justice filed a petition requesting the Second Circuit Court of Appeals revisit its unanimous decision that the government could not use a warrant to force American companies to share data on users' emails stored abroad. In response, Morgan Reed, executive director of ACT | The App Association, released the following statement: The Justice Department’s petition for a rehearing of the Second Circuit’s earlier unanimous decision only reinforces the need for Congress to act by passing the International [...]

Today, HHS Office of Civil Rights released guidance to clarify HIPAA obligations for companies storing and sharing health information in the cloud. This comes after a 2014 pledge to Congress from HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell to work with ACT | The App Association and its Connected Health Initiative to make the regulatory environment better for connected health companies. In response, Morgan Reed, executive director of ACT | The App Association and president of the Connected Health Initiative released the following statement: The Office of Civil Rights [...]

Today, ACT | The App Association and a broad group of tech organizations and individuals filed a joint amicus brief in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas to oppose a temporary restraining order that would delay the IANA transition. Accordingly, ACT | The App Association President Jonathan Zuck, who has been a prominent member of the ICANN community for over a decade, released the following statement: We are disappointed by eleventh-hour efforts to undermine the integrity [...]

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on a proposal aimed at modernizing how consumers access cable and satellite programming. These rules will govern how consumers access devices (sometimes called “set-top boxes”) needed to view subscription cable and satellite content (termed by the FCC as “multichannel video programming,” provided by “multichannel video programming distributors” or MVPDs). While the FCC issued proposed rules earlier in 2016 intended to improve consumers’ home viewing experiences with new, innovative technologies, we can [...]

Yesterday, ACT | The App Association and a group of its members from across the country sent a letter to leaders in Congress in support of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Stewardship Transition between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The small company innovators stated in the letter: We believe that the transition will significantly improve accountability, as well as long term sustainability, by making ICANN responsible to technologists, businesses, [...]