Between October 28 and 30th, the 2015 edition of the Brazilian Congress of Telemedicine and Telehealth (CBTMs) was held at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). The event included presentation of diverse panels with different approaches to the world of telehealth and telemedicine in Brazil and worldwide, and workshops on tele-education, teledentistry, primary care, health informatics, among others.

The first day of congress was attended by the directors of the Brazilian National Educational and Research Network (RNP), Michael Stanton (Research and Development), José Luiz Ribeiro Filho (Services & Solutions) and Wilson Coury (Management). The latter participated in the panel about infrastructure and sustainability moderated by the national coordinator of the Telemedicine University Network (in portuguese, Rute), Luiz Ary Messina. The initiative, which connects and integrates the public university and teaching hospitals, is coordinated by RNP. Messina also moderated the panel about telehealth and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), with participation of representatives from each country.

Michael remembered the arrival of the internet in the country, presented the RNP and the mission of promoting the innovative use of advanced networks in Brazil, showed how is constituted the network national academy, the Ipe network, with 27 points of presence and highlighted the RNP's connection infrastructure for video use and transmission of images with a resolution in Ultra High Definition (4K) in complex surgeries. "The advanced applications developed enabled new partnerships in health that we did not have before", said.

In his presentation, Wilson made an overview of the work done by the RNP, which provides optical network infrastructure to 1219 campuses and units in the capital and in the interior, mainly comprised of universities, institutes, and federal and state research facilities, teaching hospitals and museums. He showed the national backbone and stressed the importance of updating the Ipe network's capacity to 100 Gbps. "This will be the necessary infrastructure to meet future Internet demands with regard to the storage and transmission of data, theses, slides and access to digital collections of Brazil", mencioned. The director also presented the RNP strategy for the next five years. "Our 2020 vision includes the definition of two structural axes, which are the mobilization of national and international communications infrastructure scalable and integrated operations within the campuses of client institutions", explained.

The Community Networks initiative of Education and Research (in portuguese, Redecomep) and implementation of the metropolitan network in Rio de Janeiro, Rede Rio, were the highlights in the José Luiz lecture on network infrastructure in the city and state of Rio. Actually there are 127 serviced points: 60 are from academic institutions and from other partners such as local governments (28 points), Supervia (22) and Metro-Rio (17). "We are now going towards the interior of Rio, with Veredas Novas project, which offers academic internet usage conditions for the development of collaborative research and experiment of advanced applications similar to those of the institutions in the country's capital", said. According to him, 119 teaching and research institutes will be met with an own network inside.

Among the impacts of Redecomep program, the director quoted the largest number of national and local collaborative projects and improving local connections to the national RNP's network, the active participation of states and municipalities in the maintenance of infrastructure and deployment points traffic between metropolitan networks. There are currently implemented 37 optical networks in operation, with connections of at least 1 Gbps between its participants.