Cisco's announcements from Eastern Europe, following the tenth anniversary of Cisco Networking Academy in Turkey, confirm the company's belief that network technology is the key to global advancement for emerging markets. In Poland Cisco has announced that Polish Medical Air Rescue (PMAR), which operates 22 planes and helicopters in 16 sites across the country, has implemented Cisco technology to help improve patient care and provide more efficient and secure services. PMAR provides the emergency transportation of severely ill or injured patients who require immediate specialised medical assistance, as well as transporting organs, medical teams, blood and medical products.

The new local-area network from Cisco will connect all 16 sites. To achieve this, it will incorporate highly secure access control and storage solutions to safeguard intranet operations, documents and e-mail flow. In Hungary, representatives of Cisco Hungary and Magyar Telekom have handed over a state-of-the-art connected hospital infrastructure at Bethesda Children's Hospital in Budapest. The new network and communication infrastructure will help streamline medical services, which will ultimately result in more efficient treatment to even higher standards.

The project, realised with a US$600,000 joint donation from Cisco and Magyar Telekom, includes new fixed and wireless networks, a new hospital information system, electronic patient records, IP telephony and RFID-based location services to track expensive medical equipment.

More info:

• www.cisco.com