"It will increase the capacity and the bandwidth here to improve telemedicine and those types of things," Foley said.
Salem was the fourth and final municipality to unanimously vote "Yes" to joining the Roanoke Valley Broadband authority.
What Foley refers to when he says "telemedicine" is quite remarkable. Telemedicine means that patients can receive treatments or assistance from specialist via Internet programs like skype from their local physician or even at home.
Kendall White is the executive director of technology services for Carilion. He says telemedicine even allows patients medical equipment in their home to be monitored by their doctors, even when they are hours away.
"It can actually take some of the medical equipment that we have in their house and tie them into our systems and real time have patient information back to the provider and the physicians so that we can enhance the patients care," White said.
If you are a Carilion patient, the days when all of your medical charts were kept in a folder in your doctors office are over. No all of your medical records are stored in a data base electronically.
Protected by heavy security, only authorized personnel have access to the room. While it may look like only wires and flashing lights, behind all of the bells and whistles are thousands of patients medical records. Captured down even to photos and x-rays.
It's all information that can be accessed by your doctors with adequate broadband strength.
"It's very bandwidth intensive," said White. "So if you don't have high speed network circuits it's very hard to send those images. Sometimes impossible."
But with broadband coming to the Roanoke Valley, sending and receiving those images will now be possible at a much more reliable and faster pace.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Rachel Lucas
Quelle/Source: WSLS, 10.09.2013
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