The network should be designed to facilitate current and future information exchange and telehealth services. When designed at the consortium level, it is possible to simplify the RFP and implementation process and improve the ability of members to share information through private WAN links or VPN as each member chooses.

Because the members of a consortium typically have had limited opportunities to exchange information in a reliable and secure way prior to the development of the consortium, the needs of each individual member may be varied.

The short-term strategy should be to make sharing services feasible and allows for each member to opt-in or opt-out of shared services as each desires while still ensuring that the member may operate independently as desired or needed as operational and financial influences vary.

In order to continue to grow and support collaboration over the long term, the consortium’s strategy should be to continue to explore new and emerging technologies that may be implemented on the network, and the consortium should continue to assess the needs of its members and address shortcomings and improve collaboration opportunities over time.

The consortium should ensure that the strategy underlying this project permits for scalability and evolution to a future vision of improved collaboration and information sharing between healthcare providers. This may begin with simple VPN interconnections over the Internet and then expand later into private connections.

CTC has assisted hundreds of healthcare providers design and implement networks that include:

• Commodity Internet
• Internet2
• National Lambda Rail (NLR)
• Secure Data Networks
• High Bandwidth Networks
• Diverse and Redundant Networks
• Quality of Service Networks
• Scalabe Networks