SYDNEY, April 6, 2004 - Cisco Systems ® has been selected to provide the networking infrastructure for an Internet-Protocol (IP) based health care solution, designed to improve medical services in rural New South Wales.

The network, managed and deployed by Telstra and Dimension Data, will help improve the provision of healthcare to more than 175,000 residents spread over an area of 100,000 square kilometres within the New England Area Health Service (NEAHS).

Cisco ® solutions will help the NEAHS to create a single, high-speed voice, video and data network, connecting more than 32 health facilities across the region. The network will allow those hospitals and community health centres to provide patients with increased access to specialist staff, increased clinical collaboration and improved administrative efficiency. More than 2,000 Cisco IP phones will be deployed across the network, helping to cut operational communications costs and improve productivity for NEAHS staff.

NEAHS Chief Executive officer, Fergus Fitzsimons, said many patients served by the NEAHS are in remote areas, and have difficultly accessing transport to travel long distances to see medical specialists.

"Through the deployment of the IP-based network, many of our remotely-based patients will be able to avoid some of those long and tiring journeys to see a specialist, as the consultation can be delivered via videoconferencing technology," Mr Fitzsimons said.

The NEAHS project is due for completion in June 2004. It will help:

• Medical specialists remotely consult with their patients via videoconferencing links.
• Health professionals view patient information (including medication, allergies, diagnostic testing and pathology etc) in real-time through the NEAHnet intranet.
• Health professionals to provide diagnosis and/or a treatment plan for patients without having to move patients to another hospital where a specialist is based.
• Provide educational and professional development for health professionals in the New England region via remote training from institutions such as the University of New England and the Armidale TAFE.

Ross Fowler, Cisco managing director, Australia and New Zealand, said: "Cisco IP Communications solutions will help to enable productivity benefits to the health care industry and improved service to patients. Cisco has worked closely with the Telstra and Dimension Data to help ensure that these benefits can be realized by the NEAHS."

The Cisco solution for NEAHS is based on the deployment of more than 2,000 Cisco 7960 series IP phones, Cisco CallManager call processing software, Cisco Catalyst® 3550, 4500 and 6500 series switches, 3700 and 2600 series routers. The Cisco IP/VC 3540 Series Videoconferencing System is also deployed on the network, integrating multipoint conferencing, multimedia gateway, and data collaboration into a single platform.