History

AFHCAN began as the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network, an initiative of the Alaska Federal Health Care Partnership (AFHCP) back in 1998. The AFHCP is a unique collaboration of federal agencies that brought together Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, the United States Coast Guard, Indian Health Service, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) for the purpose of providing healthcare to over 300,000 federal beneficiaries in the State of Alaska.

Since its inception, AFHCAN has grown to provide telemedicine solutions to 273 sites across six states and three nations. Now approaching its tenth year of operation, AFHCAN continues to improve access to healthcare through sustainable telehealth systems.

Growth

AFHCAN continues to review, develop, and deploy new telehealth technologies. After extensive market surveys, evaluations, in-house testing, and working with manufacturers, the total number of supported biomedical peripherals has expanded from the original four up to twelve, with additional support for video conferencing.

On the AFHCAN Cart, all of this advanced functionality is within the same four (4) square foot of floor space in a small clinic. New hardware platforms have been also been developed, including a portable telehealth briefcase and an integrated wall-mount system.

Software development has grown alongside the hardware, with two versions of the tConsult application being available. tConsult Cart simply and seamlessly integrates a variety of biomedical peripherals, supporting both online and offline modalities. tConsult Web provides a secure portal via an easy-to-use web interface for consulting on and creating cases.

Challenges

Alaska's unique environment has proven to be a great challenge to AFHCAN design efforts - a challenge that has inspired an even greater solution. Development efforts have focused on creating products that will work with poor connectivity, in harsh climates, and for a wide variety of users.