National Library of Medicine Supports 24 Next Generation Internet Projects
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces 24 contract awards totaling $2.3 million to medical institutions and companies to develop innovative medical projects that demonstrate the use of the capabilities of the Next Generation Internet (NGI). The NGI program, announced in the fall of 1996, combines the resources of such government entities as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NASA, and NLM.
According to NLM director Donald A. B. Lindberg, M.D., "If we are to benefit from the fruits of modern medical science we must be able to transfer massive amounts of data-instantaneously, accurately, and securely. These projects are an important step in that direction." Among the NGI capabilities widely expected to be available are virtually error-free service, security and medical data privacy, "nomadic" computing, network management, and infrastructure technology for "collaboratories."
Michael J. Ackerman, Ph.D., NLM Assistant Director for High Performance Computing and Communications, and coordinator of the projects, said that "The availability of the NGI will lead to a whole new set of applications that are based on the ability to control, feel, and manipulate devices at a distance. To get an idea of what we foresee, one need only read the terms used in the descriptions of the projects: telepresence, tele-immersion, teletrauma, telemammography, internetworking, and nomadic computing." The word "haptic," used in several of the descriptions, refers to the sense of touch and motion.
The NLM is funding these demonstration projects with the goal of improving our understanding of how the Next Generation Internet can affect health care, health education, and health research systems in such areas as cost, quality, usability, efficacy, and security. There is a link to more information about the NGI and telemedicine on the NLM home page at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/.
A list of the projects follows.
Pathology Image Database System.
Yale University is planning a pathology image
database system, Pathmaster, accessible
via the World-Wide-Web. When a pathologist
is confronted with a slide containing a
cell whose nature is uncertain, a digital
image of the cell can be submitted to
Pathmaster, along with certain clinical
information about the specimen. Pathmaster
will automatically compute descriptors and
pass back images to the user along with
their cell types and diagnoses.
Contact: Perry L. Miller, M.D., Ph.D.
Yale School of Medicine
Center for Medical Informatics
333 Cedar Street, P. O. Box 208009
New Haven, CT 06520-8009
Phone: 203-785-6753; Fax: 203-785-6664
Networked 3D Virtual Human Anatomy.
The
goal is to build a virtual human cadaver
based on the Visible Human dataset. An
online virtual cadaver would be available
to a wide range of students who can
explore the virtual cadaver with a variety
of tools. High-end applications will have
a haptic interface.
Contact: Victor M. Spitzer, Ph.D.
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
4200 East Ninth Avenue
Denver, CO 80262
Phone: 303-274-0501; Fax: 303-315-4729
Rural Health Science Education.
This
project will develop a plan to evaluate
the use of computer and interactive
compressed video technologies to support
rural health science education. It will
enable delivery of interactive educational
programming, such as grand rounds and
continuing medical education, clinical
information systems, library services, and
consultation. Beneficiaries will be
students, residents, and health care
professionals.
Contact: Dr. Leo Bairnsfather, Ph.D.
Louisiana State University Medical Center
1501 Kings Highway
Shreveport, LA 71130-3932
Phone: 318-675-6536; Fax: 318-675-7757
Biomedical Tele-immersion.
By combining
teleconferencing, telepresence, and
virtual reality, tele-immersion enables
teachers and students to interact with
three-dimensional models. Tele-immersion
combines several virtual reality systems
with advanced network capabilities for
learning especially in surgical education.
NGI guarantees data privacy and security,
and will allow tele-immersive environments
derived from models of patient data.
Contact: Jonathan C. Silverstein, MD
University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Biomedical and Health Information Services
1919 W. Taylor
Chicago, IL 60612-7249
Phone 312-996-5112; Fax: 312-996-8342
National Emergency Medicine Information
Extranet.
The National Emergency
Information Infrastructure Consortium
(EIIC) will create a plan for
implementation of a secure National
Emergency Medicine Information Extranet to
improve emergency care across the nation.
The primary application to be developed
will enable interlinked standards-based
emergency encounter registries, then
feedback to providers 'just in time' multimedia
educational and treatment protocol
services. The project will create an open
architecture to enable other layered
applications in the future.
Contact: Edward Barthell, M.D.
Infinity Healthcare, Inc.
1251 Glen Oaks Lane
Mequon, WI 53092
Phone: 414-290-6700; Fax: 414-290-6781
Personal Internetworked Notary and
Guardian.
The Personal Internetworked
Notary and Guardian (PING) project is
designed to address the control of a
personal record that can be integrated
with more traditional sources of clinical
information for patient use in the home,
at work, and at school. In particular,
PING is focused on: 1)reconstitution of
the patient longitudinal records from both
provider-based information systems and
portable, personal record systems, on the
Internet; 2) providing simple and secure
authentication mechanisms; and 3)
evaluation of the impact of PING upon the
process of healthcare.
Contact: Isaac S. Kohane, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Children's Hospital Informatics Program
300 Longwood Ave., Enders 150
Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617-355-7821; Fax: 617-730-0456
Implementation to Serve Visible Human
Datasets.
This project plans to implement
an NGI production system to interactively
serve Visible Human datasets and
anatomical data evaluation software. The
image and knowledge data objects will be
accessed by NGI-enabled World Wide Web
users and evaluators. The system will
provide to the user multi-resolution,
anatomically labeled images within these
Visible Human datasets as requested.
Contact: Brian D. Athey, Ph.D.
The University of Michigan Medical School
4771 Medical Science Building II
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
1335 Catherine St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0616
Phone: 734-763-6150; Fax: 734-763-1166
G-CPR and the NGI.
The Louisiana State
University Medical Center proposes to
implement a system of longitudinal
electronic health records over the NGI
that will integrate its ten public
hospitals. This project is based on the G-
CPR, or Government Computer Based Patient
Record, a collaborative effort between the
Department of Defense, Department of
Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Service,
and the LSU Medical Center. The objective
of this project is to enable secure access
and sharing of clinical information.
Contact: Richard Ferrans, M.D.
Louisiana State University Medical Center
Department of Public Health
1600 Canal Street, Suite 800
New Orleans, LA 70112
Phone: 504-588-3507; Fax: 504-588-3938
Secure Radiologic Collaboration on the
Next Generation Internet.
The goal is to
plan the implementation and deployment of
a suite of collaborative medical
applications to provide a secure, real-
time, interactive environment for viewing,
analyzing, and comparing radiological
images in a clinical environment. This
will provide clinicians and technologists
the ability to share, in real-time,
diagnostic imagery and medical data.
Contact: Douglas L. Long, Sr.
Principal Scientist
Odyssey Research Associates, Inc.
Cornell Business & Technology Park
33 Thornwood Dr., Suite 500
Ithaca, NY 14850-1250
Tel: 607-257-1975; Fax: 607-257-1972
Open Architecture Multispecialty Data and
Telemedicine Integration on the Next
Generation Internet.
The purpose of this
project is to plan the implementation of a
multispecialty telemedicine testbed using
NGI. The plan will identify existing and
new multispecialty applications in patient
care, continuing medical education, and
patient education to be integrated into
this platform. The planning activity is to
be conducted by a team of scientists and
clinicians from all pertinent parts of the
proposing organization.
Contact: Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D.
Corporate Director
Partners Telemedicine
1 Longfellow Place, Suite 216
P.O. Box 8941
Boston, MA 02114
Phone: 617-726-4447; Fax: 617-726-7530
Patient-centric Healthcare Management over
NGI.
This project will demonstrate a
patient-centric approach for healthcare
management over the NGI. The demonstration
will build upon the Electronic House Call
system developed by Georgia Tech and the
Medical College of Georgia to allow
patients to videoconference with their
healthcare providers and to monitor
medical measurements over a secure
network. A simple graphical user interface
enables patients to control the system
themselves. The system combines
videoconferencing, vital signs
measurements, patient education resources,
and medical records, and enables patients
to participate in their own healthcare.
Contact: Mr. John W. Peifer
Senior Research Scientist
Biomedical Interactive Technology Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
250 14th St., NW
Atlanta, GA 30332-0200
Phone: 404-894-7028; Fax: 404-894-7025
Adopting the NGI as a Tool for Healthcare
and Information Access.
This project will
assemble a team of medical informatics
users and networking advisors to analyze
biomedical and healthcare information
processes and select those which best
demonstrate the application of NGI
technologies and tool sets, while
simultaneously providing demonstrable
benefit to healthcare practitioners and
end users. Many information processes in
healthcare clinical services, biomedical
education, and research will be assessed.
Once applications have been identified,
the assessment team will select viable
candidates, then formulate an
implementation strategy for one
application area.
Contact: Brent K. Stewart, Ph.D.
University of Washington
Grant and Contract Services
3935 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: 206-616-1314; Fax: 206-543-3495
The Empathy Network: Improved Healthcare
Delivery for Survivors of Mild Traumatic
Brain Injury (MTBI).
The objective of the
Empathy Network is to employ virtual
reality technology, high performance
computing centers, and NGI capabilities to
dramatically improve the healthcare
delivered to MTBI patients. VR technology
will allow clinicians to construct a
virtual world that simulates the cognitive
and perceptual deficits experienced by an
MTBI patient. VR and NGI technologies will
then enable a patient's other healthcare
providers, family, friends and co-workers
to experience the MTBI patient's problems
in coping with everyday life. This will
engender empathic insight, support, and
understanding that are crucial elements of
an MTBI patient's recovery and adaptation.
Contact: David L. Zeltzer
Sarnoff Corporation
201 Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08540
Tel: 609-734-2975; Fax: 609-734-2662
Remote, Real-time Simulation for Teaching
Human Anatomy and Surgery.
This project
plans to demonstrate remote, real-time
teaching of human anatomy and surgery,
using the NGI. A simulator architecture
will be developed to deliver real-time
simulation and visualization technologies
to a diverse audience. The client
component is a desktop PC or workstation.
The simulation server receives sensor and
control input from the client and
transmits response streams. The NGI
network-based architecture will allow for
a heterogeneous mix of client
configurations ranging from simple mouse
and color displays to multiple high-
resolution stereographic displays and
haptic devices.
Contact: Parvati Dev, Ph.D.
Stanford University School of Medicine
SUMMIT
1215 Welch Road, Modular A
Stanford, CA 94305-5401
Phone: 650-723-8087; Fax: 650-498-4082
Interactive Medical Data on Demand: A
High-Performance Image-Based Warehouse
Across Heterogeneous Environments.
The goal of this project is to determine the
requirements of a system for intuitive,
real-time access to patient-specific data
records based on multimodal images and
multimedia. They will evaluate and select
system architectures, software, and
network configurations to provide access
over different network bandwidths and
platforms. This design will include
scalability of the system and
extensibility to other healthcare
applications.
Contact: Donald L. Stredney
Ohio State University Research Foundation
Health Sciences Offices, B-030 Graves Hall
333 West Tenth Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: 614-292-9248; Fax: 614-292-7168
NGI-Aware, Scalable, Secure, and Adaptive
Technology for Rural Telemedicine.
The goal of this project is to develop a plan
to demonstrate telemedicine applications
that will utilize NGI infrastructure.
Telemedicine scenarios include: 1) nomadic
clinics; 2) public health station; and 3)
a consulting health station in rural
clinics and hospitals. These systems will
be configured with a set of
videoconferencing, diagnostic, and patient
monitoring equipment.
Contact: Y. V. Ramana Reddy, Ph.D.
West Virginia University Research Corporation
886 Chestnut Ridge Road
Morgantown, WV 26506
Tel: 304-293-7226; Fax: 304-293-7541
Medical Nomadic Computing Applications for
Patient Transport.
The goal of this
project is to transmit multimedia
diagnostic information in real time from
ambulances to receiving physicians using
NGI technologies, thus enabling diagnostic
and treatment opportunities during
transport.
Contact: David M. Gagliano
BDM International, Inc.
1500 BDM Way
McLean, VA 22102
Phone: 703-848-6134; Fax: 703-848-6741
Distributed Revolutionary Medical
Education Environment.
The objective of
this project is to develop a plan to
implement and evaluate a distributed,
medical education environment on a network
testbed that simulates the characteristics
of the NGI. These applications will be
delivered across the spectrum of medical
instruction, from undergraduate to
postgraduate to continuing education.
Contact: Lael C. Gatewood, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
Office of Research and Technology
1100 Washington Avenue So., Suite 201
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone: 612-625-4909; Fax: 612-625-7166
Radiation Oncology Treatment Planning/Care
Delivery Application.
The goal of this
project is to develop, implement, and
evaluate NGI capabilities for radiation
oncology treatment planning and care
delivery. The application will provide
diagnostic support, treatment planning,
and remote verification of proper
operation of treatment equipment from the
Comprehensive Cancer Center to a remote
JHU treatment facility. The proposed
project will have a strong evaluation
component focused on quality of service,
security, privacy, and data integrity.
Contact: Joseph S. Lombardo
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Road
Laurel, MD 20723-6099
Phone: 240-228-6287; Fax: 240-228-6834
Applications Layer Security Solution for
Stationary/Nomadic Environments.
This project will evaluate extant security
techniques within the context of an open
security architecture. The solution is
based on security shared among
collaborating parties, nomadic computing,
and the privacy of medical information.
The architecture includes user
authentication, remote access to medical
databases, nomadic computing, and
confidentiality of data.
Contact: Brenda Garman
Motorola Space and Technology Group
1190 Winterson Road
Airport Square #14, Suite 350
Linthicum, MD 21090
Phone: 410-859-4761; Fax: 410-859-0787
Human Embryology Digital Library.
The goal
of this study is to develop a research and
education network for medical image
acquisition and analysis. A high
performance optical network testbed will
link government labs and universities with
traditional medical research facilities.
The focus of the project is on the
analysis and delivery of digital
histopathology image data. The proposal
includes the definition of a set of
demonstration projects that use a
collaborative consultation system for
research, surgical planning, and basic
research.
Contact: George S. Michaels, Ph.D.
George Mason University
Office of Sponsored Programs
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: 703-993-1998; Fax: 703-993-1993
Integration of Security Mechanisms for
Internet Applications.
The goal of this
project is to develop a plan to integrate
the PCASSO (Patient Centered Access Secure
Systems Online) with biomedical
applications. It will be demonstrated
through a testbed involving medical
treatment facilities in Delaware,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey and
the Frederick (Md.) Biomedical
Supercomputer Center in an information
technology infrastructure. The NGI
infrastructure for this region is being
developed under the HUBS (Hospitals,
Universities, Business Schools and
Communities) Initiative.
Contact: Raymond E. Cline, Jr.
Security Applications International Corp.
(SAIC)
1710 Goodridge Drive, M/S 2-3-1
McLean, VA 22102
Phone: 703-749-8648; Fax: 703-821-1134
Telemammography Using the NGI.
The goal of
this project is to plan and implement a
testbed to demonstrate the feasibility of
a national breast imaging archive and
network infrastructure to support
telemammography using NGI technologies.
The proposed infrastructure would: support
traditional breast screening; provide the
opportunity to maintain and apply standard
image processing and computer-aided
diagnosis software; permit access to
breast imaging experts for primary and
secondary interpretations; and provide an
opportunity to study and understand
epidemiologic issues in breast cancer.
Contact: Mitchell Schnall
University of Pennsylvania
Research Services
133 S. 36th Street, Suite 300
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3246
Phone: 215-662-7238; Fax: 215-662-3013
Teletrauma and the NGI.
The goal of this
project is to plan the implementation of
an integrated system of trauma care for
Southern Louisiana using an NGI
telemedicine network. This network will
provide instant access to the Trauma Team
at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New
Orleans which will provide online
assistance. Distance education training
for emergency personnel, network
management, and quality of service issues
are all elements of the project.
Contact: Richard Ferrans, M.D.
Louisiana State University Medical Center
Department of Public Health
1600 Canal Street, Suite 800
New Orleans, LA 70112
Phone: 504-588-3507; Fax: 504-588-3938