Yesterday morning, doctors in India examined microscope slides Maryland with the help of an Internet connection that puts regular broadband to shame.

"It's almost as if they were right in the room," said Dr. Robert C. Bollinger, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Clinical Global Health Education.Using the advanced network of Internet2, Hopkins doctors engaged in an interactive HIV/AIDS clinic with doctors in three different Indian facilities. All told, the program connected eight U.S. institutions with three in India.

Besides lively medical debate through DVD-quality video conferencing, the clinic included high-resolution digital microscopy, three-dimensional MRIs and an interactive representation of HIV drug resistance.

None of that would have been possible without the Internet2 network, which is approximately 1,000 times faster than the average home broadband connection, said Lauren Rotman, spokeswoman for Internet2. The Washington, D.C.-based network was founded in 1996 to provide high-capacity connections to research and development institutions. It now includes 208 universities, 70 corporations, 45 affiliate members and 70 international partners.

Bollinger said Hopkins was approached by Internet2 and the World Bank Group to develop an interactive, online clinic for use with India.

Michael McGill, head of Internet2's Health Sciences Initiative, said the network has the potential to revolutionize how physicians work together; no matter where in the world someone is, there could be access to experts in all fields. There can be an immediate discussion among medical peers, which is especially important considering how medical specialties are becoming more focused, he said.

"When you put an advanced network in place, suddenly things are possible that were never possible before," McGill said.

Bollinger said the new program will expand on Hopkins' global health center's mission to provide care and expertise to the world's resource-limited locales.

While India's technology is advancing, it still lags far behind the United States in terms of HIV/AIDS treatment, he said. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in 2005 more than 5.9 million Indians were HIV positive - the most of any country in the world.

With programs such as yesterday's HIV/AIDS clinic, Indian hospitals can access Hopkins' experts without anyone ever leaving their own laboratories.

Bollinger said the Internet2 program was a long-term, cost-effective alternative to flying physicians back and forth between Hopkins and the four corners of the world. He said it also limits the "brain drain" for Hopkins - when the university can't use its own doctors and researchers because they're off at other sites.

Bollinger said the university hopes to expand its use of Internet2 to other countries. The global health center also works with Ethiopia, Zambia and the Congo, and has been in contact with Panama.

As impressive as the Hopkins demonstration might have been, it still represented only "the lowest of our high-tech capability," McGill said of Internet2. The consortium is working with the Department of Defense on a way to provide medical expertise to inaccessible battlefields and with NASA to help take care of astronauts on the International Space Station.

Rotman said other current Internet2-enabled programs include music lessons from the New World Symphony in Miami and undersea tours from Robert Ballard, who found the sunken remains of the Titanic.

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