Seahawk project [telemedicine and teleradiology]

Abstract

Seahawk superimposes the opportunity for telemedicine and teleradiology on the medical community of the US Northwest. Seahawk represents the congressional intent to support this technology. They demonstrated this intent by appropriating around about ten million dollars in the 1994 Defense Appropriations bill. Four hundred thousand dollars has gone to communications infrastructure. With this they are connecting into the US West Sonet Ring that traverses the Puget Sound area and gives access to the high bandwidth needed for telemedicine and teleradiology. Six and half million dollars is going to procure equipment and install it. That money, even though this is a 1994 appropriation, has only become available in December of 1994 and one has only this year to spend it. And what is one going to get with that? There is the Medical Diagnostic Imaging Support (MDIS) system and the connections between Madigan and University of Washington. The author discusses linking organizations with the ability to translate digital images across all of those institutions. Madigan will become a truly digitized hospital. There will be a jukebox with archiving capability, but it will be a technology that can move images back and forth across these installations.