Network World — The Obama Administration's push towards health IT -- including electronic health records and a nationwide health information network -- has one important prerequisite: reliable, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity.

Health 2.0 Meets Government Stimulus

Internet2, a consortium of 200 U.S. universities, 70 corporations and 45 government agencies, has been applying advanced networking to medical research, education and clinical practice for several years. With its Health Network Initiative, Internet2 is underpinning the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Healthcare pilot program, which promotes the use of telehealth and telemedicine services nationwide.

Mike McGill, program director for Internet2's Health Sciences Initiative, talked with Network World's Carolyn Duffy Marsan about how he believes gigabit-speed networks can transform the healthcare industry. Here are excerpts from the conversation:

Describe the Internet2 Health Network Initiative.

Medical researchers, educators and clinicians are all looking to Internet2 to show them what is possible to do with a network in the medical environment.

Let me give you a couple of examples in the clinical area. I live in Columbus, Ohio, and Columbus has a very good children's hospital downtown. The children's hospital has relationships with a number of rural institutions, particularly for being able to take care of neonatal babies. Initially, the protocol for babies that weighed one pound was to immediately put them on a helicopter and fly them to the experts at the children's hospital. But that's expensive because helicopters are expensive to fly, and the family has to get to the baby. They started to experiment with using the regional network that's a counterpart to Internet2. With relatively inexpensive video equipment that's capable of high-resolution imagery, the remote hospital sends video to an expert physician who can determine the color of the baby and determine the baby's ability to move. Fifty percent of the time they are not transporting the baby. When they don't transport the baby, the outcomes are better for the baby and the family. And every time they don't put a baby on a helicopter, they save $5,000.

Another example is with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA has responsibility for taking care of the wounded warriors when they get back. Many of those end up in rural areas, and an increasing number come back with post traumatic stress disorder. The psychiatrists with expertise in post traumatic stress disorder are almost always in urban areas. We've demonstrated the ability to put a patient up on a telepresence environment with a remote psychiatrist. The psychiatrists said that the kinds of things they look for -- eye color, signs of drinking, sores in the patient's mouth, tics -- couldn't be seen with normal video conferencing. But with telepresence, you can see all of that and a lot more. Telepresence offers the kind of clarity that we normally see face to face.

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