WASHINGTON – The government should reimburse physicians who conduct e-mail or online consultations with patients and develop incentives to expand the use of information technology in healthcare, delegates from the 2005 White House Conference on Aging said this week as part of a series of policy recommendations.

The once-a-decade gathering brought together more than 1,000 delegates, who will send state governors a list of policy priorities and then deliver final recommendations to Congress and the White House. Other healthcare-IT related recommendations included a policy to “stimulate innovation and investment to support current and future seniors.” This is the first time technology issues have made it on the conference’s list of recommendations.

Earlier in the week, Intel Chair Craig Barrett told attendees that developing technologies that let the elderly live longer, independent lives is key to changing the healthcare system.

“A broad range of personal health technologies designed to go into the home hold hope for seniors to ‘age in place,’ maintaining their independence and deferring costly institutional care,” said Barrett, who is also a member of the American Health Information Community, a group charged with advising the government on ways to speed IT adoption in healthcare and make health records digital and interoperable.

Intel is a founding member of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, a group of more than 400 IT vendors, aging services organizations, research universities and government leaders. CAST members displayed technologies such as embedded sensors that can track and monitor a person’s vital signs and a device that is embedded into a medicine cabinet that reminds users about the medicines they have taken. Intel is now testing a “smart watch” system that prompts users to take their medications and displays reminders on the television, through the phone or on the watch.

Meanwhile, CAST is calling on the private sector and government to promote the development and application of technologies for older Americans. The group also is urging Congress to encourage federal agencies to use technology developed for the military and healthcare to improve care for the aging population.

Eric Dishman, CAST chairman and head of Intel’s Health Research & Innovation Group, said there are four barriers to delivering technology for seniors: liability fears, licensure issues, and a lack of reimbursement and funding. For example, licensure issues prevent doctors in one state from remotely treating patients in another state, limiting the feasibility of home care technologies. In addition, many IT vendors have liability concerns surrounding the use of these devices as healthcare applications. CAST is asking Congress to conduct a series of hearing on the liability issues and explore the possibility of safe harbors that would protect IT vendors, Dishman said.

Dishman also lamented the time it takes the government to approve medical devices, saying it often takes seven years for devices that could help older Americans to be approved.

“Our regulatory process is built around the drug model. It’s not clear that applying that drug model is the right way to move forward. It’s a dead end from the start,” he said.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to widespread adoption of these technologies is breaking out of the mindset that care should be delivered in a clinic, hospital or other traditional healthcare setting.

“The mega barrier is that neither policy makers, nor industry, nor consumers have an imagination about how this might be done differently,” Dishman said.

The conference’s top recommendation is for Congress within six months to re-fund the Older Americans Act, which authorized grants to states to implement programs for the aging.