Fort Sanders Health System of Knoxville, Tennessee is establishing an Internet Initiative that will allow our integrated service delivery system to access the Internet. Our system is comprised of numerous community-based facilities serving the East Tennessee region. Our services include acute care hospitals, outpatient facilities, behavioral medicine facilities, home health care, long-term care, and primary medical care. We will utilize our existing private enterprise network, a Wide Area Network (WAN) that connects our facilities, to provide institution-wide access to the Internet. Planned project applications include access to medical literature, continuing medical education, data collection and dissemination, clinical quality improvement, an online AIDS resource library, online nursing education, access to our outlying rural areas, and community health outreach. Support from NLM will provide us with the necessary connectivity hardware and software, and help to offset our cost to the Internet Service Provider for a portion of the grant period. Our system will contribute personnel time for End User Support and Training, Network Support and Project Coordination. Our system will also pay for the costs of the firewall, Web server, and Internet end user training courseware.
