News for and about the Internet2 community

["Lauren Rotman" <>]

Internet2 and Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa Form Health Sciences
Partnership

Organizations to Leverage Network Connections to Facilitate International
Telehealth Initiatives

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – October 11, 2007 – Internet2 today announced a new
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa
(RNP), the national research and education networking organization of
Brazil, to facilitate international telehealth and telemedicine
collaborations. The MOU builds on the organizations’ existing long-term
networking partnership that was established in 2000. The new MOU was made
official today at a ceremony held in conjunction with the annual Internet2
Fall Member Meeting in San Diego, California.

The new MOU provides a pathway for the Internet2 and RNP communities to
jointly lead and collaborate on the development of next-generation
telemedicine and telehealth technologies and applications. In doing so, the
organizations hope to accelerate the adoption of these important
technologies both within the United States and Brazil as well as to promote
and encourage the continued interconnection of advanced networks around the
world in support of telemedicine and telehealth.  

“The global research and education community has long understood the
potential for leveraging innovative network technology to significantly
improve the quality of healthcare worldwide,” said Dr. Michael McGill,
director of the Internet2 health sciences initiative. “Together, we hope our
joint work with RNP will yield many new breakthroughs and collaborations in
this very important field and serve as a model for our colleagues around the
world.” 

RNP is today leading a new project called Rede Universitária de Telemedicina
(RUTE) or the Telemedicine University Network. Funded by the Brazilian
Ministry of Science and Technology, the project seeks to build and update
the communication infrastructure of 57 university hospitals that are
connected throughout Brazil with the goal of enabling all participating
hospitals to use the RNP network to run telemedicine and telehealth
applications, including video conferencing for information exchange, second
opinion, continuous education and web conferencing.
 
“Telehealth and Telemedicine public policies, research and education today
in Brazil receive financial support and attention from federal Ministries:
Health, Education, Science & Technology, Communication and Defense; but also
from the Federal Medical Council,” said Luiz Ary Messina, RUTE´s national
coordinator. “Scientific partnerships between American and Brazilian health
institutions and universities have been newly identified, and researchers
from both sides are already exchanging new ideas and projects to cooperate.”

The new MOU builds on Internet2’s longstanding efforts in the international
and health sciences arenas. To date, the organization has over 50
international partnerships and connects to over 70 international networks.
Additionally, Internet2 members, including the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS),
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, and the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center together with an
additional 140 other connected healthcare organizations and medical schools,
are actively working together to develop and deploy advanced Internet
technologies in support of health sciences.

About Internet2
Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the
research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions
of its members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and
unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development,
deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies. Internet2 brings
the U.S. research and academic community together with technology leaders
from industry, government and the international community to undertake
collaborative efforts that have a fundamental impact on tomorrow's Internet.
For more information: http://www.internet2.edu/

About Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa
Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa (RNP) is a not-for-profit corporation
incorporated under the laws of Brazil that interconnects over 350 education
and research institutions, helping an estimated public of over a million
users, and linking all the Brazilian regional academic networks. The 5th
generation of this network, named Ipê, was implanted in 2005 and uses
optical technology in its gigabits links. The aggregated speed of the
backbone is of 60.4 Gbps. There are 27 points of presence (PoPs), one in
each Brazilian state. Ipê network is a high performance infrastructure for
communication and collaboration between education and research institutions
and a laboratory for testing and developing advanced network technologies
and applications.

Media Contact:
Lauren Rotman, Internet2

202.331.5345