AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

摘要

The Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center in Fairbanks, Alaska, has 30 clinics scattered across a frozen tundra the size of Texas. Some clinics are in villages, such as Fort Yukon, that are more than 100 miles away. Worse yet, most aren't accessible by road. All too often, patients who use the clinics are left biting their nails for days, waiting for X-rays and other medical tests to be mailed to experts in Fairbanks. If the weather is dicey, they may not get critical diagnoses for a week. All that is about to change. Thanks to a high-speed, optical-communications network that will be completed over the next six months, the clinics will be linked directly to Fairbanks. Then X-rays, medical tests, and case flies can be zipped instantly to doctors—and the analysis is done in minutes. "Five years from now, we're going to wonder how we got along without it," says Jim Kohler, director of Chief Andrew Isaac.