What it will take to create new Internet initiatives in health care

Today's Internet cannot fulfill the anticipated future needs of health care organizations. To address growing administrative, clinical, and research communication networking requirements and to serve as a test bed for future technology, two separate initiatives, the Next Generation Internet (NGI--federally funded by the NIH/NLM) and Internet2 (a consortium of academic partners), are establishing project partnerships that will create new and improved opportunities for health care applications and interactions such as telemedicine, medical imaging, virtual medicine, home health care, public health, consumer medicine, medical education, and medical research, among other uses. In addition to creating and improving large-scale health care networking, it is also expected that much of the technology developed and tested for NGI/Internet2 will filter down to improve the mainstream Internet.