Chapter 6: ISDN in Medicine and Health Care

Extending a Backbone with ISDN

The one limitation of these systems, however, Is that they are typically closed - not by choice, but by the economics of extending expensive, dedicated high-speed digital connections to hundreds of smaller, often remote locations.

The answer again, of course, is ISDN. Dialed BRI connections can quickly and inexpensively extend these networks to distant locations, to smaller hospitals in rural areas, to nursing homes, hospices and special care facilities, and to doctors, nurses and others at their offices and even their homes.

One of the nation's best examples of extending a backbone is at St. Vincent's Hospital in Birmingham, AL, a member of the Daughters of Charity National Health System.

According to Russell Wilson, the entire hospital campus is linked by a single, high-speed data network. Fiber-optic connections link every department on the campus for access to host computers, medical records and patient information, for reports from medical and radiological laboratories, for operating room and other schedules, for pharmacological data, accounting and billing data, as well as e-mail and other administrative information.

"Our medical record department today is totally paperless," said Wilson. Which means that doctors, nurses and other health care practitioners have immediate access to each patient's complete records, no matter where the patient is, and no matter where the information is needed.

The role of ISDN in this environment is obvious: to extend this central backbone to off-campus locations that are part of the hospital's care system. These include radiology and medical laboratories throughout Birmingham, clinics and offices of doctors associated with the hospital, doctors' homes for weekend and evening access, and even insurance companies and others who need patient billing information.

Equipment used includes a Gandalf concentrator at the hospital linked to Gandalf routers at remote LANs and individual desktop computers. Speeds through bonded B channels in a single ISDN BRI average about 600Kbps, according to Wilson.

"Users at remote sites really cannot see a difference," he said. "Dialed connections are set up in less than three seconds, and transmission and response times are so fast that users feel like they are actually on the LAN."

Subsections Of This Chapter:

Beginning Of Chapter 6
Making Information Available
Extending a Backbone with ISDN
Teleradiology
Patient Information & Medical Records
Remote Video Consultations
Electronic Claims Processing

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