TELESYNERGY® has the following benefits:

• pools national and international expertise
• improves direct collaboration among medical professionals
• accelerates research findings and clinical impact
• affords greater flexibility that is more appropriate to the complexities in cancer research and the limited resources available for today’s cancer challenges
• gains significant efficiencies of scale in human expertise and capital resources

TELESYNERGY® has the following features:

• Interoperability with a variety of environments

Because TELESYNERGY® systems use Windows PCs, it can be integrated with other existing systems and databases, such as hospital PACS systems.

All TELESYNERGY® systems use the same underlying audio, video, and data transmission protocols, so all TELESYNERGY® sites can conference with each other, regardless of any one site's customizations. TELESYNERGY® systems can also be used in audio/video-only mode for video conferences with other non-TELESYNERGY® video conference systems.

• Fully HIPAA Compliant:

Patient-identifiable data is not transmitted through the TELESYNERGY® system. The system encourages physicians to refer to patients by non-identifable numbers or aliases ("Patient A", "Study 3", etc.). Additionally, all conferences between TELESYNERGY® network sites are done through private ISDN lines and can be encrypted; no data, video, or audio is ever sent through vulnerable Internet connections or other public channels. The system can be isolated (physically or through a firewall) from the rest of a hospital's network.

• Affordable, Advanced and Compatible

TELESYNERGY® is being constantly redesigned to incorporate new advances in medical and communications electronics. Systems can be designed to meet each institution's needs for cost, functionality, training, and space requirements.

Systems can be designed for ease-of-use requiring little training for users, or high-end systems which require a representative of the institution to become an on-site expert. All conferences run over an ISDN PRI (U.S.) or ISDN PRA (Europe) line, which gives the system a guaranteed quality of service. Conferences are carried out using 768kps for audio and video plus 512kps for data, which allows for near-diagnostic quality video. Because all conferences are running over a dedicated line, the TELESYNERGY® network is not susceptible to slowdowns or data-insecurity experienced on the Internet.

• Minimum maintenance

The ongoing maintenance requirements for the TELESYNERGY® system are minimal.  All devices are ordered with an extended warranty from the manufacturer.

The only steady maintenance for the system are software updates for the PC and CODEC, which can be upgraded remotely from NIH and usually does not involve staff on the remote end. Should a non-hardware related issue arise, we have the ability to troubleshoot the situation using the TELESYNERGY® system and the patient examination camera. To date, all issues that have arisen have been resolved remotely using the TELESYNERGY® system.