News Release

Cisco to Provide Network Infrastructure for NEEMO 7 Underwater Mission on Remote Medical Care

IP-based technologies help non-surgeons deliver medical care in extreme environments
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Aug 09, 2004

SAN JOSE, Calif., August 9, 2004 - Delivering telerobotics-assisted medical procedures by sea - and then applying them to space and other harsh environments - is an important goal of a 10-day underwater NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 7 Mission. Cisco Systems, Inc.announced today that it will be providing the secure networking technologies to help enable this remote-care mission.

The NEEMO 7 mission, to be conducted October 11-21, 2004 off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, will focus on the demonstration and evaluation of innovative remote-care surgical technologies and techniques in an underwater environment, where extreme conditions are similar to those found in space. The mission allows the crew to test these techniques in an extreme environment and determine the viability of non-surgeons delivering emergency diagnostic and medical care.

"The NEEMO 7 mission demonstrates the applicability of Internet Protocol (IP)-based technologies in delivering mission-critical services and applications, such as telemedicine and tele-surgery, which are helping to transform healthcare today," said Jane Eisenberg, director of enterprise marketing for Cisco. "This project highlights how a secure, reliable and responsive network, such as a Medical-Grade Network empowered by Cisco technologies, can provide the backbone for the adoption of advanced medical procedures."

Advanced Internet technologies continue to play an increasingly important role in enabling the delivery of remote medical services. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), based on Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology from Cisco, have helped to enable the successful telerobotic surgeries of the NEEMO missions. MPLS brings new levels of intelligence to IP networks by combining the intelligence of routing with the performance of switching to dramatically simplify the deployment, management, scalability and flexibility of VPNs. Mission-critical applications, such as telemedicine, place new Quality of Service (QoS) and redundancy demands on IP networks. Highly secure, MPLS-based VPNs ensure performance over different classes of service, allow connection over different media, and meet the transport and bandwidth requirements, where lives hold in the balance.

Cisco today joined the other NEEMO 7 Mission agencies - the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario; the Canadian Space Agency; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) - in announcing the crew and the mission at a press conference held at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, located in Mt. Hope, Ontario (see related NEEMO 7 Mission releases issued today by visiting http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/media/press_room/press_room.asp and www.nasa.gov)