Broadband Communities

JAN-FEB 2018

BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.

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TELEMEDICINE 5 4 | B R O A D B A N D C O M M U N I T I E S | w w w. b r o a d b a n d c o m m u n i t i e s . c o m | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 Access to reliable broadband can determine how convenient, affordable and far-reaching telemedicine benefits are to communities that receive them. Health Care Hubs: The Future Of Telemedicine and Broadband Health care and broadband stakeholders collaborate to improve and expand telemedicine. By Craig Settles / Gigabit Nation N ot long ago, telemedicine described a simple concept of remotely monitoring a patient's health data wherever he or she might be located. Many telemedicine patients were elderly, living at home and suffering from a long-term condition or chronic disease. Today, however, telemedicine can mean using intranet or internet networks to diagnose a patient or administer, initiate, assist, monitor, intervene in or report on a medical procedure. Telemedicine now touches many medical disciplines, including mental health, stroke care, dermatology, women's health and physical rehabilitation. It influences the lives of people from newborns to seniors. Access to reliable broadband can determine how convenient, affordable and far-reaching telemedicine benefits are to communities that receive them. Enter the creation of health care hubs, which join multiple health care providers via broadband to benefit the communities they serve. WHAT'S A HEALTH CARE HUB? A community can use its broadband infrastructure to link hospitals and clinics in a "hub" to gain economies of scale for health care properties, broadband infrastructure and/ or telemedicine applications. row the net farther and create a new broadband triple play – aligning health care institutions, schools and libraries into a telehealth care hub. Telemedicine providers that connect health care facilities to one another and to residents can often serve as the initial anchor tenants for community broadband networks. TELEMEDICINE GIVES RURAL HOSPITALS A LEG UP A hospital and its rural satellite facilities in Massachusetts are giving their communities renewed hope that more citizens can receive leading-edge health care now and in the future. Telemedicine is the key. Based in Springfield, Baystate Health is a nonprofit health care organization that serves more than 750,000 people throughout western New England. Employing about 11,500 team members, it's the largest private employer in the region. Baystate Health's rural community hospitals don't have enough local medical specialists (cardiologists, vascular neurologists and so forth) to serve people in need. Springfield-based specialists had to travel an hour or more each way to service community hospitals.

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