NORTH Network

NORTH Network was a telehealth organization serving communities in Northern and Central Ontario. NORTH's head office was located in Toronto and its clinical headquarters in Timmins. NORTH was a program of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and received funding from the provincial government's Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
NORTH Network's name is an acronym which stands for the Northern Ontario Remote Telehealth Network.
As of April 1, 2006 NORTH Network merged with Ontario's two other regional telehealth service providers (Videocare (Southwestern Ontario) and Careconnect (Eastern Ontario) to form the Ontario Telemedicine Network.
Mandate and Operations.
NORTH provided patients in rural and under-serviced communities access to specialized medical care using videoconferencing and other tele-diagnostic equipment. Specialists remotely examined and prescribed treatment to patients in their home communities.
NORTH also connected healthcare professionals and students in the north to educational programmes, and delivered healthcare-related administrative services to its member organizations.
At the time of its integration into the Ontario Telemedicine Network, NORTH was facilitating over 2,000 clinical consultations each month and an additional 500 educational and administrative events. NORTH was the busiest telehealth programme in Canada, and may have been the largest network of its kind in the world. Its size and volumes have increased significantly since forming a province-wide network. More than 2,000 physicians and other allied health professionals used the Network, which linked more than 226 sites in more than 120 communities across Ontario.
History.
The NORTH telehealth network began as an experiment undertaken by the Harris government from a 1995 OMA study to compensate for hospital funding cutbacks, and doctor shortages. The study
examined how telemedicine could improve access to health care for citizens of rural and remote Ontario. As a network of providers who shared information about difficult, or difficult to diagnose or difficult to treat patients, the project was able to empower physicians treating their patients at arm's length via information-sharing.
Launched in six sites in 1998, NORTH Network experienced a significant expansion between 2001 and 2003, thanks to funding from Health Canada's Canadian Health Infostructure Partnerships Program (CHIPP). 
The original sites involved in the project included: Timmins and District Hospital (Timmins), Lady Minto Hospital (Cochrane), Kirkland and District Hospital (Kirkland Lake), Sudbury Regional Hospital (Sudbury), Sunnybrook and Women's College Hospital (Toronto), and the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto), all in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Barry McLellan was one of the original proponents of the NORTH project, leaving his position as medical director of the North network to become Coroner for Northeastern Ontario.
Members.
Hospitals
Educational and Community Organizations
Public Health
Teleprimary Care Sites
with collaborating family physicians
Government
Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth