Internet used as carrier for telehealth delivery in Ottawa pilot project

An Atlantic Canada-based company is making a small move into the delivery of telehealth, linking cardiac patients in rural areas of eastern Ontario with a larger facility in Ottawa. Officials at xwave are hopeful a successful deployment will lead to the expansion of the project into other geographic areas and into other medical disciplines. The company, a subsidiary of eastern ILEC Aliant Inc., has created the Regionally Accessible Secure Cardiac Health Records (RASCHR) system to connect the University of Ottawa Heart Institute with a dozen hospitals in the surrounding area. Under the program, physicians from outlying areas can send patients to the Ottawa facility and later send their records over a secure virtual private network using the Internet. While other companies, such as Video Network Communications Inc., are rolling out telemedicine using copper wire (NL, May 22/01), the use of the Internet makes it economical for the clinics to sign up. "From the referral hospital’s point of view, there’s no special software or additional computing facilities that they need. It’s all done as a web interface," Michael Martineau, xwave’s director of business development, explains to Network Letter. "So all they need is their terminals that are web enabled. There is very little investment they have to make." Xwave is able to piggyback on the infrastructure currently being installed by the Ontario government. The provincial health ministry has started the Smart Systems for Health initiative to connect hospitals across Ontario. The facilities will all have access to high-speed broadband when deployment is completed. Health Canada is also involved. It has earmarked $80 million in its Canada Health Infostructure Partnerships Program (CHIPP) for several telehealth projects. The Heart Institute-xwave venture received some funding from the plan. Bell Canada is providing the public key infrastructure that keeps the data secure. That was one of the main concerns, Martineau says, but the partners believe they have a structure that protects sensitive information. "It’ll be full 128-bit encryption both ways, moving the information," he notes. "The system itself is designed in three layers. Only the web server layer is accessible to the outside world and only to those who are authorized to access it. So even if someone hacked by the first level of security, all they would get to is a web server that really has no information stored on it. So all the applications are back in another server behind a firewall. And the database, in fact, is behind a second firewall." Martineau is proud that xwave started with a small program and developed it to its optimal capability. Last month, the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation awarded the company a prize for community advancement for the Heart Institute project. The xwave director says discussions are currently underway with hospitals in other parts of the country to get them on to the RASCHR system. The program only works for referrals right now, but could possibly be expanded to handle emergencies when patients are travelling and away from their regular doctor. "The whole notion of this project was to try and bite off a piece that we could actually implement rather than trying to boil the whole ocean," Martineau states. "So the cardiac records were chosen first but the whole concept is extensible to other disciplines. So what we’re currently exploring is how to expand that geographically – for other regions that have similar cardiac care centres – and also into other disciplines, things like cancer, for example." The deployment is currently underway, with the system expected to be fully operational by the fall. Martineau reports that summer vacations have caused some shuffling of training sessions, but that all staff should be up to speed in a few months.

Internet used as carrier for telehealth delivery in Ottawa pilot project

News | 07/15/2002 4:00 am EDT

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