OREANDA-NEWS. August 01, 2012. National LambdaRail (NLR) and AT&T jointly announced the first step toward a networking solution to virtually connect major cancer centers, universities, medical schools, research hospitals, laboratories and other institutions across the United States to help transform the healthcare industry’s ability to diagnose, prevent, treat and/or manage illness and medical conditions of all kinds, reported the press-centre of AT&T.  

NLR is the nation’s premier advanced research communications network and plays a key role in helping connect researchers in the area of genomic medicine – treating a patient based on his or her specific genetic profile. With some chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, a patient may not respond to a particular treatment due to differences in the genetic code.

AT&T will deliver high bandwidth connectivity to NLR's national network infrastructure for leading health sciences institutions, starting with Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “Saint John’s is delighted to be the first hospital in the country to connect,” said Lou Lazatin, President and CEO of Saint John’s Health Center. “This will allow Saint John’s and its cancer research subsidiary, the renowned John Wayne Cancer Institute, to create a gene sequencing center enabling identification of genetic, genomic, and clinical information to tailor treatment and targeted therapies to each individual’s disease.”

NLR Chairman and CEO Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong described the agreement as “a major advance towards an integrated, robust and secure healthcare information infrastructure for the United States. Working closely with AT&T, NLR plans to offer medical organizations the data handling capacity to make genomic medicine a reality -- no longer confined to researchers, but a transformative tool in the hands of doctors at the point of care. This is the first step to bring genomic science directly to the clinical world of genomic pathology in a way that will support treatment decisions and improved clinical outcomes.”

“Our AT&T ForHealthSM vision is that technology and smart networks can help create a healthier world, and these connections will help healthcare providers improve the quality of patient care and outcomes,” said William Archer, President of Advanced Solutions, AT&T Business and Home Solutions. “As NLR creates a national intranet of health, we plan to help them manage complexity, control costs, improve productivity, and deploy applications and technology infrastructure to advance continuous improvement in healthcare.”

AT&T has agreed to provide the middle and last mile connections to NLR’s nationwide backbone infrastructure. NLR and AT&T are working together on an expanded relationship to simplify the IT design, management, and evolution of the NLR network. By having AT&T manage the network, NLR will be able to focus on advancing efforts in genomic medicine, bringing evidence-based medicine to the point of care to help providers customize patient care paths. The ultimate goal of the broader solution is to connect virtually all of the nation's key academic, healthcare and research institutions to accelerate the translation of new science into therapy and better healthcare.