VA to utilize Internet2’s high performance network and collaboration community to enhance healthcare resources: Internet2 today announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has joined Internet2 as an affiliate member and has connected to its nationwide network. Through its membership, VA can leverage the Internet2 backbone network as well as tap into the Internet2 community’s numerous collaboration opportunities, in order to enhance its partnerships with universities, medical schools, medical libraries and research institutions in the U.S. and around the world. In the near term, VA plans to work with the Internet2 advanced networking community to investigate next-generation technologies like IPv6 and determine how these technologies can enhance the transmission of medical data and information. Additionally, the VA medical community intends to explore how the Internet2 Network may be used to support medical data sharing, distance learning, high resolution image transfers and bandwidth-intensive health science applications like telepresence, telepathology, and IP video for home healthcare. VA connects to the Internet2 high performance nationwide network via the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads at one of the VA's existing secured Internet gateway locations in the Washington DC area. This link will facilitate communications between all VA facilities and affiliated institutions and business partners that are also using the Internet2 Network. As the VA network and business requirements evolve and the VA relationship with Internet2 expands, the Department may consider connections to Internet2 from other VA locations in the future to support specific projects and demonstrations. “VA provides critical medical care and services to our nation’s veterans. We welcome VA to the Internet2 community and look forward to helping them to tap into a wide array of new healthcare resources via the Internet2 Network and community. We believe we will be able to work with them to enhance the care and services in the future for our nation’s veterans,” said Michael McGill, director of the Internet2 health sciences initiative. “We look forward to cultivating a long term and fruitful relationship with VA as the Internet2 community continues to focus more resources and development efforts on health sciences and the improvement of health research, education and clinical care through advanced networking.”