Connecting medical General Practitioners, hospital consultants and pharmacies with the pharmaceutical industry

The Health track Professional Service (HPS) is a satellite-based broadband network connecting medical General Practitioners (GPs), hospital consultants and pharmacies with the pharmaceutical industry and other service providers in the sector. The service provides a high-speed channel for the parties to send and receive large quantities of rich media information in the form of text, pictures, video and interactive educational packages. The HPS is a delivery service that utilises the concept and technical possibilities of satellite communications equipment installed in GPs offices throughout the UK. The satellite system allows broadcasts to be received by individual sites with a back channel communication capability, through a VSAT return channel. The Health track Professional Service network provides high quality medical training direct to the desktop of GPs, and other medical practitioners. The immediacy of the medium ensures that students are provided with the most up to date training available. Training delivered in this manner is more cost effective than classroom based training, and has less impact on the financial and time resources of the GP. This platform was planned to ultimately meet many of the information network needs of health care professionals and provides both future proofing and product evolution for further application developments.