A multi-institutional mobility model for regional deployment of Telesynergy telemedicine systems

The Telesynergy workstation is a remote medical consultation system that provides medical staff with the means to collaborate with one another on cancer research and treatment. There are about 25 systems in use around the world. In order to share the equipment with five community hospital partners in Western Pennsylvania, we designed and implemented a transport system for the workstation. Small groups can be accommodated within the trailer and larger groups can participate inside a building when the system is offloaded at a suitable site. We designed special transport cases for the main components and chose a trailer suitable to move them by road. The transport cases were secured by inexpensive, ratchet style tiedown devices made of woven nylon webbing with steel end hooks. Calculations suggest that these restraints are sufficient to protect the equipment in a 48 km/h vehicle collision. During the first 12 months, we moved the trailer more than 700 km without system damage. Mobile videoconferencing seems to be successful on both environmental and cost grounds.