READ MY DD , It paints a picture on why $NEOM has been running... I'm guessing Patrick Soon-Shiong found a use for there Patent... This is most likely the reason imo.
National LambdaRail connects nearly 300 universities and federal laboratories via a high-speed fiber-optic network
The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health (CSS Institute) has achieved a major milestone in its establishment of a secure “medical information superhighway” as first envisioned by founder Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D. and outlined to the Institute of Medicine in July 2009.
The CSS Institute has assumed financial responsibility for the nation’s premier advanced research communications network – National LambdaRail . NLR consists of over 12,000 miles of high performance optical fiber from coast to coast, capable of speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second. In partnership with Cisco Systems and their technology platform, NLR provides universities and government agencies with massive data transmission services required by leading-edge research.
“Phoenix is the very center of this transformation–not only for Phoenix and the state, but for the nation and the world,” said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon in the Phoenix Business Journal , describing the city’s rationale for signing a contract with the CSS Institute. Gordon first announced the CSS Institute’s intention to locate in Phoenix during his State of the City address in March.
The CSS Institute intends to put the virtually unlimited capacity of NLR at the disposal of genomic and proteomic researchers, connecting them with each other, with supercomputing capabilities and ultimately with health care providers. NLR will continue to serve all other big science projects, as it does now. For example, connecting the U.S. institutions working with the Large Hadron Collider built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switz., and also the laboratories of federal agencies such as NASA and NIH.
The CSS Institute’s financial commitment, which is estimated to amount to more than $100 million, is enabling NLR to embark immediately on substantial upgrades to its entire network. The special focus on health will be served by new connections with genome sequencing centers around the United States, and with the CSS Institute’s newly opened data centers and supercomputer in the Discovery Triangle, both of which were unveiled in April and are to be dedicated to health data.
“The CSS-NLR partnership will be truly transformative,” said Dr. Soon-Shiong, who has become chairman and CEO of NLR. “NLR’s national network infrastructure will allow us to connect with virtually all of the nation’s key academic and research institutions, and thereby accelerate the translation of new science into therapy and better healthcare. It will serve as a cornerstone of our long-held vision to establish a secure national intranet of health, and a digital infrastructure for continuous improvement in health and healthcare.”
Harvey Fineberg, M.D., president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, which has recently published a series of reports on value and science-driven healthcare, calling for a “digital infrastructure for the learning health system”, fully supports this alliance. “By enhancing the infrastructure of the National LambdaRail,” commented Fineberg, “this new partnership promises to accelerate the era of genomically-informed medical care, foster more sophisticated and timely evaluation of care, and enhance the quality of healthcare.”
Denis Cortese, M.D., president of the Arizona-based Healthcare Transformation Institute and former CEO of the Mayo Clinic, also welcomed the news. “Our healthcare system has long suffered from the fact that there is very poor connection between medical science and the delivery of healthcare,” he said. “This development is a giant leap towards bridging that divide. It will allow us to apply the power of supercomputing to the point of care, and this will be revolutionary.”
The immediate impact for Arizona will come in the form of the new jobs created by the CSS Institute planting itself in Phoenix. According to the proposal presented to the Phoenix City Council, the 14-acre project at the airport is expected to create 50 permanent jobs with salaries averaging $75,000 jobs; another 75 jobs will be created at the CSS Institute’s headquarters at the Barrister Building on Central Avenue.
“This is a great project,” said Paul Blue, the City of Phoenix’s economic-development director, in the Business Journal . “It fits with our biomedical strategy. We look forward to quality investment and quality jobs in Phoenix. In the long run, it has the potential to be a new cluster of activity for us.”
The Business Journal reported that the $200 million the CSS Institute intends to invest in Arizona is coming from the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, established by Dr. Soon-Shiong and his wife Michele B. Chan, and from Celgene Corp., the pharmaceutical firm that last year bought Dr. Soon Shiong’s firm Abraxis BioScience.
Dr. Soon-Shiong said that the CSS Institute would soon announce its first use case for the new national health information infrastructure afforded by NLR and the other connectivity provided by the Institute.
