Internet2 is a consortium of leading U.S. universities working in partnership with industry and the U.S. government’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative to develop a faster, more reliable Internet for research and education including enhanced, high-performance networking services and the advanced applications that are enabled by those services [1]. By facilitating and coordinating the development, deployment, operation, and technology transfer of advanced, network-based applications and network services, Internet2 and NGI are working together to fundamentally change the way scientists, engineers, clinicians, and others work together. [http://www.internet2.edu]

The NGI Program has three tracks: research, network testbeds, and applications. The aim of the research track is to promote experimentation with the next generation of network technologies. The network testbed track aims to develop next generation network testbeds to connect universities and federal research institutions at speeds that are sufficient to demonstrate new technologies and support future research. The aim of the applications track is to demonstrate new applications, enabled by the NGI networks, to meet important national goals and missions [2]. [http://www.ngi.gov/]

The Internet2/NGI backbone networks, Abilene and vBNS (very high performance Backbone Network Service), provide the basis of collaboration and development for a new breed of advanced medical applications. Academic medical centers leverage the resources available throughout the Internet2 high-performance networking community for high-capacity broadband and selectable quality of service to make effective use of national laboratories, computational facilities, and large data repositories.

The Internet2 Health Sciences Initiative enables a new generation of emerging medical applications whose architecture and development have been restricted by or are beyond the constraints of traditional Internet environments. These initiatives facilitate a variety of activities to foster the development and deployment of emerging applications that meet the requirements of clinical practice, medical and related biological research, education, and medical awareness throughout the public sector.

Medical applications that work with high performance networks and supercomputing capabilities offer exciting new solutions for the medical industry. Internet2 and NGI strive to combine the expertise of their constituents to establish a distributed knowledge system for achieving innovation in research, teaching, learning, and clinical care.