When you go to the doctor for treatment, nothing is more important than how you communicate with your physician in order to help him or her diagnose your ailment. Communication at the speed of light and with the ability to transmit more data faster than ever before is available now thanks to fiber optics and it's making a difference where it counts patient care and outcome.

Women's & Children's Hospital in Lafayette harnessed the power of LUS' existing fiber optic network in July of 2004 to implement a Virtual Private Network. That business decision has enabled hospital administrators to take advantage of "high speed" Internet connections and allow its doctors to have virtually the same access at their home and office, as they do in the hospital.

"The VPN allows physicians to access their patients' complete medical history 24 hours a day from their home or office," said Jeff Johnson, director of information systems at Women's & Children's. "Patients will benefit due to the fact that their physician is able to receive pertinent information quicker than before and make timely patient care decisions."

The fiber optic strands that Lafayette Utilities System has encircling the city are bundles of narrow glass tubes, each half the width of a human hair, through which laser light is turned on and off to transmit digital signals. They are fast and create a network that enables authorized users such as hospitals, state and federal government, libraries, schools and higher education to communicate via a high quality, full-motion video, data, high-speed Internet connections, and telephones.

"We are literally on the edge of a new era in electronic medicine," explained Johnson. "We have several patient safety initiatives planned as well as increased ability for caregivers to receive timely and pertinent information all without compromising the confidentiality and integrity of our patient's data."

The fiber backbone connecting the buildings on the hospital campus is also a great boon to Women's & Children's services. For example, the hospital has a digital mammography machine in one building and backs up the images to a machine in another building. This provides for disaster recovery and helps ensure important data is not lost.

Hospitals benefit from fast, reliable network connectivity to other medical providers for fast, secure transmission of information such as X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, medical and insurance records. With fiber optic communications, this information can be transmitted much faster, while maintaining better resolution and fidelity than other methods of communication. Doctors also have quick access to massive databases, and hospitals will be able to quickly download multi-media materials for training.

Women's & Children's technology team is currently working on that type of system for healthcare providers in Lafayette. As soon as a patient's X-ray is taken, the image will be immediately available to the physician at his home or office. Fiber optics allows hospitals to administer treatment more efficiently, doctors to diagnose problems more accurately and patients to receive care quicker. Fiber optics is revolutionizing healthcare, both for caregivers and their patients.