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Feds Provide $1.6 Million to Boost Telemedicine in Maine

PORTLAND, Maine - Four Maine school districts and a provider of rural health care are sharing more in $1.6 million in federal funding to expand access to rural broadband and telemedicine.

The four school districts will use their U.S. Department of Agriculture money to purchase video conferencing equipment. The almost $400,000 that MaineHealth has been awarded will be used to install telehealth videoconferencing carts at six rural medical clinics and at three home health agency sites.

The project also involves expanding the infrastructure for telehealth activity. Tom Winchell, director of telehealth at MaineHealth, says the medical grade mobile carts will include a monitor, a commercial grade camera and microphone and speaker attachments.

"It will have the ability, through a computer that will be included, to not only conduct video conferencing and telehealth interaction, but to access the electronic records or other files or documentation that will be located where ever those resources might be stored.

Winchell says there are a number of reasons why the health care delivery through distance technologies is expanding in rural Maine. Among these are long travel distances, the lack of specialty providers, an increasingly aging population and the relatively poor health of residents in rural communities.

Ed is a Maine native who spent his early childhood in Livermore Falls before moving to Farmington. He graduated from Mount Blue High School in 1970 before going to the University of Maine at Orono where he received his BA in speech in 1974 with a broadcast concentration. It was during that time that he first became involved with public broadcasting. He served as an intern for what was then called MPBN TV and also did volunteer work for MPBN Radio.