A teleconferencing system

Training of health professionals commonly involves multiple sites in order to best utilize the available clinical material. However, this makes it difficult to achieve continuity in the presentation of didactic material. We have installed a teleconferencing system using high speed switching Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) for transmission of audio, video and digital images. We aimed to emulate the ambience of a classroom at three sites in the training program. We are now in the first of a four phase evaluation trial with US West. Experience with implementing a new teleconferencing system using ATM switching is described.