Northeast Ohio awarded $11 million to extend broadband to rural health care providers
Recently, the Federal Communications Commission announced that the Northeast Ohio Regional Health Organization (NEO RHIO) and OneCommunity are the recipients of an $11.2 million capital grant that will fund 70 percent of the total $16.1 million development of a regional broadband health care network over a three year period. Funds will be used to extend OneCommunity’s dedicated HealthNet high-speed broadband network to connect 19 rural hospitals and numerous clinics spanning 22 counties to over 30 existing hospitals connected to the OneCommunity network. HealthNet will enable NEO RHIO and its collaborative medical providers to deliver telemedicine applications, records access, medical imaging and remote diagnostic services. Click here to read full details. Also, check out the story in this week’s edition of Crain’s Cleveland Business. Â
Since 2005 NorTech has been working in partnership with OneCommunity to develop the NEO RHIO. The goal has been to create a system of information sharing among regional healthcare institutions via the OneCommunity network that would improve health care access and health outcomes for all citizens in Northeast Ohio. There are currently over 15 regional hospitals in the network, anchored by founding medical partners which include the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Summa Health System, MetroHealth Medical Center, CSA/UHHS, Medina General Hospital, Akron General Medical Center, Aultman Hospital and Akron Children’s Hospital.   Â
NorTech is extremely pleased by this recent development since we provided early seed funding, vision and leadership to initiate the formation of the NEO RHIO collaboration. The NEO RHIO initiative is chaired by Tom Strauss, NorTech’s Vice Chairman and President and CEO of Summa Health System. NorTech provided support for the development of the NEO RHIO in partnership with OneCommunity by engaging NorTech Fellow Brain Keaton, MD an emergency room physician for Summa Health System. Brian has worked very closely with Mark Ansboury, CTO of One Community in bringing this initiative to fruition.  Â
NorTech congratulates OneCommunity and the entire NEO RHIO collaboration for their tremendous efforts in taking the NEO RHIO concept from vision to reality.