Time Warner Cable Business Class has commenced a trial of healthcare services in Maine, offering providers the ability to communicate and transact with each other and patients over a secure community intranet that meets federal privacy and security standards.

Time Warner Cable’s Managed IP VPN is a managed private network designed to help healthcare providers meet their HIPAA and HITECH requirements when connecting to other provider sites or Time Warner Cable’s private healthcare cloud for access to managed healthcare applications, officials say.

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"There is increasing acknowledgement that telehealth will play a significant role in medicine as healthcare costs and access to care continue to be growing concerns," said Robert Moel, group vice president of healthcare solutions for Time Warner Cable. "Our Healthcare Solutions delivered over Time Warner Cable’s private, secure connection makes it easier, faster, safer and cheaper for doctors to consult with each other, communicate with and monitor their patients and deliver a better overall patient experience."

In Maine, Healthcare Solutions provides a secure connection to the state HIE offered by HealthInfoNet. "We’re pleased to partner with Time Warner Cable on this new product," said Devore Culver, executive director and CEO of HealthInfoNet. "HealthInfoNet must ensure all healthcare providers connect to the health information exchange over a private and secure broadband connection. The Managed IP VPN product provides healthcare organizations access to a secure network without the hassle and cost of managing it themselves."

[See also: HealthInfoNet selects Health Language for Maine HIE expansion.]

To test this service, Time Warner Cable Business Class partnered with healthcare providers, including InterMed – a multi-specialty healthcare organization in Portland, South Portland and Yarmouth – and Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington. Healthcare Solutions provided for increased coordination and efficiency of communications across clinical consultant, physician and patient interactions while offering stakeholders access to vital and sensitive patient information.


Scott Patch, MD, a family physician with InterMed in Yarmouth who is participating in the trial, said the tools allow doctors to more effectively manage patients with chronic diseases while making it more convenient and cheaper for patients – particularly the elderly – in seeking medical care.

"One of my patients is over 90 years old and she can’t leave the house," said Patch. With the Health Solutions technology, he can "conduct a private appointment with her over the computer and discuss her care with her family without forcing her to get into a car and drive an hour for an office visit. From a patient’s perspective it’s an added convenience that could potentially decrease their healthcare costs."

[See also: Telehealth boon expected for chronic care patients.]

Delivered over Time Warner Cable’s managed network and data center infrastructure, the Managed IP VPN service is offered with dedicated customer premise equipment, private addressing space and routing that keeps traffic segmented from the public internet. The network is proactively monitored for optimal performance and reliability. Managed IP VPN enables customers to access managed healthcare applications hosted in Time Warner Cable Business Class’s healthcare cloud including Cisco WebEx web conferencing for real time collaboration and video conversations, while providing a secure connection to the state’s HIE, where physicians can access their patients’ history.

Officals say future applications will include home health monitoring, which will provide end-to-end solutions for collecting, storing and presenting biometric data collected through personal health monitoring devices in a patient’s home.


"With healthcare being at the top of our nation’s agenda, this is an important and strategic deployment for Cisco in the United States," said Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager of Cisco's enterprise collaboration platform. "Time Warner Cable now has the ability to offer a rich collaboration service to healthcare delivery organizations in the state of Maine resulting in improved healthcare for their residents. Cisco WebEx takes advantage of real-time collaboration giving healthcare providers the ability to communicate with patients while reducing costs and streamlining administrative processes."

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center is offered as part of Healthcare Solutions, providing the equipment and secure connection for online communications, enhancing the doctor/patient experience and providing increased frequency of patient/provider interactions. The service is delivered using a Cisco WebEx node, managed in Maine, keeping sessions off the public internet.


"Maine has always been a place where Time Warner Cable has trialed new products and services because of the state’s demographics and the fact that Mainers are early adapters of technology," said Paul S. Schonewolf, the New England area vice president for Time Warner Cable. "Digital Phone and Road Runner High Speed Internet were launched here, we were the first Time Warner Cable system nationally to launch Business Class services, and now Mainers are leading the way to better health by expanding the ability of healthcare providers to offer telehealth to their clients."