Telehealth is Focus of New Facility

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The California Telehealth Resource Center broke ground on Jan. 15 at the UC Davis Sacramento, Calif., campus. The four-story, $36 million building is designed to enhance and complement UC Davis’ expertise in the field of telehealth, which is the use of high-speed telecommunications for medical consultations, distance education, critical care and emergency services, as well as healthcare training.

Telehealth technologies have the promise of transforming and improving healthcare, especially in communities and regions that are far from large, urbanized areas with a full range of healthcare services and medical specialists. Telehealth allows clinicians at one location to monitor, consult and even care for patients in distant locations.

The new, 52,000 square-foot facility in Sacramento will include high-tech classrooms as part of a telemedicine learning center, an entire floor devoted to medical simulation training, as well as customized telemedicine consultation rooms, where physicians will meet with other physicians and patients to discuss medical cases via secure, high-speed videoconferencing connections. Construction of the new building is expected to be completed in the fall of 2011.

For more information, visit http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/cht.

FAC