Networking is good for you.There is no shortage of ideas buzzing in Dr. Rob Williams' brain. The clinical director of the Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it Remote Telecommunications Health (NORTH) Network is always looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. ways to better deliver tele-health services into every nook and cranny Noun 1. nook and cranny - something remote; "he explored every nook and cranny of science" nooks and crannies detail, item, point - an isolated fact that is considered separately from the whole; "several of the details are similar"; "a point of information" of Northern Ontario. He has a funding proposal in the works to outfit public health units and the Community Care Access Centres, the brokers for home-care services, in their coverage area with videoconferencing capabilities. He's developing a home-care chronic disease management project providing distant electronic surveillance for sickly shut-ins. The NORTH Network's future potential now is considered a North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. leader in telehealth delivery. "It's just exploding," Williams says. As co-founder of the Timmins-based NORTH Network, Williams is on the road more than ever, assisting in new site startups or travelling the continent giving presentations on the success of the network. Rolled out in 1998 with four sites in Timmins, Cochrane, Kirkland Lake Kirkland Lake, mining town, E Ont., Canada. An important gold-mining center, gold was discovered there in 1911 and again in the 1980s at Harker. The mining of iron ore and tourism are two other important industries. and Toronto, the network today comprises 180 hospitals, nursing stations and First Nations communities in Northern Ontario and has spread to the Highway 11 communities of central Ontario and into some underserviced towns in southwestern Ontario. Now Williams and his staff are preparing to move into a fifth phase of expansion, from the acute care hospital market into more community-based health-care applications, part of their integrative strategy to link hospitals with long-term care long-term care (LTC), n the provision of medical, social, and personal care services on a recurring or continuing basis to persons with chronic physical or mental disorders. and home-care providers. As chief of staff at the Timmins and District Hospital in the pre-Internet days of the 1980s and early 1990s, Even then, Williams harboured a fascination with using information technology in health care management. His networking sessions with other like-minded physicians led to a partnership with Dr. Ed Dr. Doctor. dr. dram. Brown of Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital. Brown first floated the idea of using videoconferencing to link Northern doctors with specialists in the south for consultations and continuing education continuing education: see adult education. continuing education or adult education Any form of learning provided for adults. In the U.S. the University of Wisconsin was the first academic institution to offer such programs (1904). . He recruited Williams to shepherd the project through its early development stages. Williams built a pilot program from-scratch. He raised the $2.2 million in start-up funding from government and private sources, set up the phone line infrastructure and adapted the technology--x-ray digitizers, analog stethoscopes, document scanners, faxes--and plugged them all into a videoconferencing platform. "We did a tremendous amount of work with the vendors to design the equipment and make it in a user-friendly way for health-care people and to train them." A big "leap forward" for the network was the changeover from phone lines to broadband and an internet protocol (IP) network. "It delivered huge capacity in an affordable way," says Williams. A regular month sees 1,200 doctor-patient consults and 250 educational and administrative link-ups over the network. www.northnetwork.com By IAN ROSS Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. |
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