History
The NORTH telehealth network began as an experiment undertaken by the Harris government from a 1995 OMA study to compensate for hospital funding cutbacks, and doctor shortages. The study examined how telemedicine could improve access to health care for citizens of rural and remote Ontario. As a network of providers who shared information about difficult, or difficult to diagnose or difficult to treat patients, the project was able to empower physicians treating their patients at arms length via information-sharing.
NORTH's head office was located in Toronto and its clinical headquarters in Timmins. NORTH was a program of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and received funding from the provincial government's Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. NORTH Network's name was an acronym which stood for the Northern Ontario Remote Telehealth Network.
Launched in six sites in 1998, NORTH Network experienced a significant expansion between 2001 and 2003, thanks to funding from Health Canada's Canadian Health Infostructure Partnerships Program (CHIPP).
The original sites involved in the project included: Timmins and District Hospital (Timmins), Lady Minto Hospital (Cochrane), Kirkland and District Hospital (Kirkland Lake), Sudbury Regional Hospital (Sudbury), Sunnybrook and Women's College Hospital (Toronto), and the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto), all in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Barry McLellan was one of the original proponents of the NORTH project, leaving his position as medical director of the North network to become Coroner for Northeastern Ontario.
As of April 1, 2006 NORTH Network merged with Ontario's two other regional telehealth service providers (Videocare (Southwestern Ontario) and Careconnect (Eastern Ontario) to form the Ontario Telemedicine Network.
Read more about this topic: NORTH Network
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