FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Project
Providing Broadband Telecommunications to Hospitals in the Florida Panhandle
In November 2007, the Federal Communication Commission awarded $9.6 million to the Big Bend Regional Healthcare Information Organization, in partnership with the Agency for Health Care Administration, to build a gigabit fiber network to nine rural hospitals and surrounding clinics in the Florida Panhandle. The funding was provided as part of a nationwide program to connect rural hospitals to a broadband telecommunication backbone.
Big Bend RHIO will construct gigabit fiber facilities from Florida LambdaRail interface points, to a constructed point of presence in each of the eight counties, and then run broadband last mile connections to the nine rural hospitals in the project. Once the network connections are complete, the hospitals will be online with the Big Bend RHIO, which will provide secure messaging services and facilitate the transmission of large imaging files such as x-rays, MRIs, CAT scans from fixed or mobile imaging units and other digital files between the rural and urban specialty providers in their network.
Connecting Nine Rural Hospitals in the Florida Panhandle
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