On using the national research and education network for the transmission of health care information data

The judicious application of information technology in health care systems promises substantial reduction in administration costs, however, widespread implementation requires the installation of a computer networking infrastructure of national scope. The use of the national research and education network (NREN) for the transmission of health care data has been modeled and studied with simulation experiments. The results have shown that three increasingly demanding Service Classes for the transmission of health care data for (1) text only, (2) text and graphics, and (3) text, graphics and still imagery, are supported in turn by network capacities of 45 Mbits/s, 155 Mbits/s, and 620 Mbits/s, the planned milestones in the evolution of NREN.<>