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Helping ANTHC and its partners turn a multi-state telehealth broadband program into a working system for collecting real-world connectivity data and supporting outreach, deployment, and operations.
Client
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium / National Telehealth Technology Assessment Center
Project
Telehealth Broadband Pilot Program
Project links
Services
Year
2021–2024
Overview
We connected real-world broadband measurement, local participation, and research to show how connectivity shaped telehealth readiness in rural communities.
Led by ANTHC/TTAC under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Telehealth Broadband Pilot Program brought together healthcare organizations, universities, researchers, and local partners across Alaska, Michigan, Texas, and West Virginia. We helped turn that mandate into a working field operation, developing the measurement technology and supporting outreach, deployment, data infrastructure, and program delivery.
Shaped a model combining continuous monitoring, community testing, field research, and public data.
Designed the hardware and software for fixed, web, and mobile connectivity measurement.
Managed assembly, inventory, distribution, deployment, monitoring, updates, and troubleshooting.
Built pipelines, maps, dashboards, exports, and websites that turned measurements into usable evidence.
Created campaign and educational materials and supported outreach and participant recruitment.
Supported partner coordination, HRSA reporting, and grant administration.
The Challenge
Broadband coverage maps and provider-reported data could make a community appear connected even when unreliable service, outages, and changing performance still made virtual care inaccessible.
Measuring conditions across 25 rural counties and county-equivalents brought its own challenges. Sites were dispersed, networks and connection types varied, and bandwidth limits and data caps differed. Devices had to operate reliably, recover from outages, and support remote maintenance and updates.
The human infrastructure mattered too. Healthcare teams needed confidence that devices could be installed safely, while local partners recruited sites, coordinated deployments, and explained the tools to participants with varying technical experience.
The program therefore needed more than a speed test. It required field-ready technology, repeatable deployment, partner support, public education, and consistent data across four states.
Our Approach
No single product could make the program work. It required a connected approach that paired reliable measurement technology with the outreach, deployment, support, and local problem-solving needed across rural communities.
We designed those two sides together: a technical system for collecting and interpreting evidence, and an operating model for putting it to work.
Fixed, web, and mobile measurement connected to mapping, dashboards, public resources, and research workflows.
Outreach, participant recruitment, deployment, troubleshooting, partner coordination, and program support.
The products were designed as parts of one evidence chain rather than as standalone tools. Shared data and infrastructure allowed site-level observations to build into a broader view of rural connectivity.
Recurring measurements instead of isolated snapshots.
Fixed-site, web, and mobile data collection.
Remote setup, monitoring, updates, and support.
Consistent data for mapping, export, and analysis.
Turning public data into geographic insight
Broadband Mapping turned large-scale public speed-test data into an interactive website for exploring connectivity by provider, performance, and time across states, counties, and tribal lands.
Continuous field measurement.
Field devices ran recurring tests across homes, healthcare facilities, businesses, and community sites, with scheduling, data controls, and remote monitoring.
Low-friction community participation.
An embeddable speed test let residents and partners submit measurements and context—location, connection type, and service cost—without dedicated hardware.
Wi-Fi and cellular testing in the field.
The mobile app gave local teams location-aware Wi-Fi and cellular testing, test history, and field investigation across rural communities.
The tools only created value if people joined the program, devices reached the right sites, and local connectivity problems could be understood and acted on.
Created campaign and educational materials, supported direct outreach, and helped partners recruit people and organizations.
Managed pod assembly, inventory, distribution, installation support, monitoring, and updates across dispersed sites.
Worked with local teams to identify Wi-Fi, hardware, cabling, and ISP configuration issues, then shared practical ways to resolve them.
The partnership
We were initially brought in to develop the monitoring hardware and mobile testing app. As the program moved into field delivery, ANTHC/TTAC asked us to take on a wider operational role.
What began as product development grew into a long-term partnership spanning field delivery, data, outreach, troubleshooting, coordination, and program administration.
Build and support the tools needed to collect broadband evidence in the field.
Process, map, export, and communicate measurements across public and research-facing tools.
Help the program coordinate deployments, partners, infrastructure, and the workflows required to keep the initiative moving.
The impact
The Telehealth Broadband Pilot Program created a multi-method system for collecting and interpreting broadband evidence across rural communities.
According to the public program evaluation, 425 pod-deployment locations were recorded across the four participating states. Of those, 378 locations met the criteria for analysis, producing more than 3.6 million analyzed pod speed tests across the 25 target counties and county-equivalents. The result was more than a dataset. The program had fixed and mobile measurement tools, public maps, research workflows, community-facing resources, and the operational foundation needed to keep those parts working together.
4
Participating states
25
Rural counties and county-equivalents
378
Locations included in the analysis
3.6M+
Pod speed tests analyzed
Why it mattered
Broadband access is part of telehealth access. A connection that exists on paper may still be too inconsistent, limited, or unreliable to support the services people depend on.
By combining measurements from real locations with public data and local participation, the program gave communities, researchers, public-health leaders, and policymakers a clearer view of where connectivity barriers existed and what they meant in practice.
The work also moved beyond documenting poor service. Partners gained practical tools, shared evidence, and troubleshooting knowledge to investigate local problems and make better-informed decisions about intervention and investment.
Beyond the pilot, the work left a reusable toolkit, public data infrastructure, and operational practices that communities could adapt for future measurement, research, planning, and efforts to improve connectivity.
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