MEDIACOM PARK, NY — Carbondale, Ill. has transitioned from a rural railroad town into a regional center for education and healthcare. This transformation is due, in no small part, to the way Mediacom Business has invested in building out its fiber-optic infrastructure to provide high-capacity broadband that is critical for businesses in rural areas to compete on a national level.

Southern Illinois Healthcare (SIH), a not-for-profit health care system serving the Carbondale area, has interconnected three hospitals and 21 clinics across 16 counties over Mediacom Business’ advanced fiber-optic network. This powerful broadband connection allows SIH’s 3,400 employees and medical professionals to immediately share patient data and electronic medical records with facilities outside of their main location.

Telemedicine Enables Advanced Remote Health Care
In many rural areas, patients have to drive hours for truly specialized care. Understanding that time is of the essence in medical emergencies, SIH professionals are now using telemedicine technology to confer with medical specialists outside their area in real-time to conduct online examinations and share diagnostic images and video.

“Prior to Mediacom Business, sharing data was really limited to just text-based,” said Dan Templin, senior vice president, Mediacom Business. “You couldn’t send images, you couldn’t really do anything that required a lot of data throughput, because the bandwidth just wasn’t there,” said Nathan Phoenix, Manager of Infrastructure Systems for SIH. “Now we’ve advanced into telemedicine, which requires more bandwidth, because now we’re sharing video to show what’s going on with a patient remotely. There’s no other way to do it, other than using fiber.

“The robust fiber network connections Mediacom Business provides across our 22 state footprint are enabling medical and educational institutions to fully engage in telemedicine and e- learning. It’s creating transformational experiences in the economies of the communities we serve, and in the quality of life for their residents. We’re especially proud of our partnership with SIH, which has allowed them to be a recognized leader in utilizing telemedicine to improve the level of healthcare to people throughout the region.”