Yipes Providing `Speed of Light' Optical IP Network to Palo Alto Medical Foundation.

Health/Medical/Technology Writers and Business Editors

SAN FRANCISCO and PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--March 20, 2000

Palo Alto campus and satellite facilities providing advanced telemedicine applications becomes first customer for Yipes' broadband

network

Yipes Communications, Inc., the leading provider of fully scalable bandwidth for business applications, and Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) today announced that Yipes will build light-speed links between PAMF's Palo Alto campus, its satellite clinics and the Internet to facilitate a broad range of advanced medical imaging and telemedicine applications.

Yipes is the leading managed optical IP network provider. Its high-speed LAN-to-LAN and LAN-to-Internet services will enable the transmission of high-bandwidth applications such as medical records and diagnostic images between PAMF's offices and the Internet at unprecedented speeds.

Phil Hitchings, PAMF chief information officer, said the gigabit capacity (up to a billion bits per second) of Yipes' network puts PAMF out front in health-related information-technology capabilities.

"We're keeping ahead of the techno-wave," he said. "We are racing forward with new applications in imaging, teleconferencing from the desktop, full-motion video, interactive distance learning and other areas that will require very high speeds and broad bandwidth."

"The increased bandwidth that Yipes provides will enable us to transmit huge volumes of CT scans to other facilities in seconds," explained Hitchings. "The core of the system will be a closed, private network to assure complete security for confidential patient information," he said. "The Yipes optical IP network will also allow a direct, high-capacity connection to the Internet for linking PAMF with other care providers or business partners anywhere in the world."

"It's hard to imagine any limits on what PAMF will be able to do with this capacity," said Frank Robles, vice president for operations at Yipes. "The bandwidth we provide will offer exciting opportunities to enhance patient services while controlling costs. This will put PAMF at the technological forefront of the health care industry."

"Gartner Group believes that health care is an industry which will benefit greatly from sophisticated networked applications. By enabling Palo Alto Medical Foundation to provide telemedicine and other "high touch" healthcare applications over the network, Yipes is positioned to serve this important and rapidly growing market," said Jay Pultz, Vice President and Research Director, Gartner Group.

PAMF also plans to use the increased bandwidth that Yipes provides for cost-effective educational diagnosis and self care. For example, with Yipes' network, patients will be able to view full video demonstrations on the proper techniques for bandaging a sprained ankle without return doctor visits.

PAMF will not initially use or have to pay for the full capacity available from Yipes' network. "One of the unique strengths of Yipes is that it offers fully scalable bandwidth, from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps, in 1 Mbps increments," said Hitchings. "It gives us room to grow at whatever pace we need. With Yipes, we only pay for what we use."

Yipes' fiber optic link, scheduled to be completed this fall, will complement an earlier installation at the medical facility of high-speed, high-capacity local area network switches. "This network allows us future expansion," Hitchings said of the combined systems. "We're planning for growth before the growth takes place."

PAMF has been using a copper-wire-based network, which has been reliable but far slower than the new optical network.

PAMF will connect its satellite facilities to Yipes' network beginning with the Redwood City office. PAMF's Fremont Center will follow, along with the Los Altos Center and the specialty Sunnyvale Sports Medicine Center. The PAMF Medical Transcription department will also be connected.

Scott Nichols, PAMF technical services manager, said PAMF staff and doctors are increasingly enthusiastic about the new systems. "Physicians are getting jazzed about where we're going," he said. "They're seeing the advantages. It will increase the quality of care and efficiency by providing information more quickly. "The desktop computer plus the Internet create a window to the world of health care. Yipes' new high-speed connection will open that window very wide."

Yipes is the defining provider of a new class of managed optical IP networks. Yipes leverages the elegance of native Ethernet technology to provide service that is smoothly scalable (in 1 Mbps increments) from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps, enabling the next generation of Internet services. Yipes' networks provide roughly twice the bandwidth at 80 percent of the price of traditional data communications services. Yipes' is funded by Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), The Sprout Group/DLJ, Soros Fund Management, Chase Capital Partners/Hambrecht & Quist, BancBoston Ventures/Robertson Stephens, NewSpeed Capital and strategic investors Juniper Networks, Inc., Extreme Networks and Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.

The Palo Alto Medical Foundation is a large nonprofit medical group practice based in Palo Alto since the 1920s. It provides care to nearly half the households in the Mid-peninsula region between Sunnyvale and San Mateo, as well as to a growing number of patients in the East Bay. It also encompasses an active Education Division that provides health promotion and disease-management information for the entire community, and a Research Institute that conducts basic scientific research relating to human health. PAMF relocated its Palo Alto services into a new, $120-million campus on El Camino Real in early December -- and the fiber-optic connection will cap its preparations for the next century of health care. For more information, visit PAMF's Web site at www.pamf.org.