Three Senate Democrats--Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas--are voicing their doubts over proposed health care legislation, raising the prospect that one or all three of them could scuttle the bill before the fight over it gets underway on the Senate floor, the New York Times reports. As this highly controversial piece of legislation continues to draw the scrutiny it deserves, the ZigBee Alliance and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) are stepping up to educate both health care professionals and consumers on the benefits of telecommunications technologies.

As part of a new liaison agreement unveiled yesterday, the groups plan to focus on the capabilities of ZigBee Health Care, an open standard for secure monitoring and management of non-critical, low-acuity health care and wellness services. Designed to cut patient costs while improving care, ZigBee Health Care offers the ATA a ready-to-implement telehealth solution featuring interference-free and secure wireless connectivity, capable of supporting many common, non-critical medical devices. It also delivers a robust network that is considered ideal for secure, remote patient monitoring.

The plan calls for the two organizations to advocate on behalf of telecom solutions, targeting diverse groups including traditional medicine, academic medical centers, technology and telecommunications companies, e-health, medical societies and government.

As someone who's been banging the telehealth drum for a while now, I'm all for bringing down the barriers to telemedicine adoption. It's always hard to predict how effective any awareness raising campaign might be, but it's hard not to view this effort as a step in the right direction.