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In July 1996 the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) was initiated by the state legislature in recognition of the needs of under-served populations in the state. Two important goals are: establish a statewide telemedicine network infrastructure; and use that infrastructure as a test bed to evaluate the effectiveness of state-of-the-art telemedicine services. These two goals exist in the context of an integrated, multidisciplinary telemedicine program. It is necessary to accommodate distinct levels of connectivity for sites depending on their association with the program and the corresponding level of services to be provided. For remote client sites requiring the highest level of service were selected the use of dedicated T1 circuits. At these sites the capabilities provided include: PC based store-and- forward services; point-to-point interactive real-time video interactions for clinical encounters; and multi-point interactive real-time video interactions for support groups and educational activities. For sites funded for lower levels of service we selected simple dial-up telephone based communications to support store-and-forward activities and inexpensive telephone based video conferencing equipment for administrative interactions. At the service sites distributed within the Arizona Health Sciences Center (AHSC) we selected standard LAN technology for store-and-forward applications and T1 based services for interactive video. To integrate these services we selected the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol, integrated with the LAN environment within the AHSC. The integrated telemedicine network supports eight client sites and two service sites with T1-based ATM and four sites with dial-up lines. At the AHSC, ATM and LAN infrastructure is distributed to several clinical areas, allowing physicians to support telemedicine activities where they normally work. Between July 1997 and Jan 1999 over 2000 telemedicine sessions have been performed, nearly 50 percent of which are teleradiology consults. The use of T1-based ATM has facilitated the development of a wide-area infrastructure that has been easily integrated with LAN and dial-up technology to provide the foundation for diverse telemedicine services.
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