ARIZONA TELEMEDICINE PROGRAM - IMPLEMENTING A STATEWIDE HEALTH-CARE NETWORK

The Arizona Telemedicine Program was established in July 1996 by the A rizona state legislature. The organizational center for the program is the Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson. Key goals for the progr am include increased access to specialty services for rural, underserv ed populations; development of cost-effective telemedicine services; a nd expansion of opportunities for education of health professionals in rural areas. The program provides several levels of services based on both store-and-forward and real-time interactive applications. The te lecommunication infrastructure is provided by two methods: The first i s a private asynchronous transfer mode network established and operate d by program personnel. The second is dial-up access via the public sw itched telephone network. After an extensive period of organization an d vendor evaluations, most of the private network was implemented betw een June and December 1997. This paper describes experiences establish ing the asynchronous transfer mode network.