There's only one other network that connects all healthcare providers, POTS. Which is why fax was/is popular in the healthcare space for the longest time.
If you're suggesting that the hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers just in the US all get together and lease some dark fiber -- there's zero chance that happens.
Besides, doctors routinely use resources on the public internet.
> If you're suggesting that the hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers just in the US all get together and lease some dark fiber -- there's zero chance that happens.
I am suggesting that not all computers in a hospital need to have an Internet-accessible connection.
Nor even all applications on a PC need to be Internet-accessible: if you're using Windows you can have an application icon that does not launch a program locally, but rather initiates an RDP session to a terminal server (TS) and runs the program there, while the app window is displayed locally (like X11 forwarding). The (TS) server is dual-homed so the app that runs there can (e.g.) connect to patient records network, but the local PC that is just being used as a display is not on that sensitive network.
For all practical purposes, yes it does. Unless you are expecting hospitals and doctor's offices everywhere to develop their own parallel internet-like network. Which seems a bit unreasonable to expect of everyone.
Certainly it's doable: other commenters point out that Sweden and Poland have systems like this. But they are also relatively small countries, and presumably their governments have decided to foot the bill for most or all of it. The idea of the US doing something like that is unfortunately laughable, and you can be sure healthcare institutions aren't going to pay for it.
> Unless you are expecting hospitals and doctor's offices everywhere to develop their own parallel internet-like network.
I am expecting (health) IT staff to make an assessment on whether a system needs to (a) have Internet access at all, or (b) have Internet access perhaps through a filter/proxy.
There are entire classes of devices that should not / do not need to be able to reach www.google.com or 1.1.1.1. While my DC HVAC & PDU and IPMI networks have network connectivity, but they do not have Internet connectivity.
Connected to network ≠ connected to Internet.