With a flashy new Web site crammed with audio and visual effects, the Advanced BioTelecommunications and BioInformatics Center (ABBC) has launched an effort to shed its image as the Health Sciences Campus’ “best kept secret.”

The ABBC, which has served the Health Sciences Campus and community since 1994, created the new site to boost awareness of the broad range of services it offers, including computer support, Web site design and off-campus DSL hookups.

The new ABB site, abbc3.hsc.edu/identity, describes the group and also demonstrates its expertise.

“Many campus groups are unfamiliar with all that goes on at ABBC,” said Steven Stumpf, senior research associate.

For example, the ABBC has completed a Web site for the postgraduate division allowing for promotion and online registration for all the continuing medical education programs. It is also finishing an online CME Website for presentation of past programs. It has produced online grand rounds for Family Medicine and the AIDS Healthcare Task Force. Each project features streaming video webcasts of lectures and slides.

“We describe ourselves as a telemedicine applications research shop, but basically we offer solutions to help campus groups improve their operations by leveraging the power of the Internet,” Stumpf said.

To that end, the ABBC has:

o broadcast live and archived clinical presentations for different campus groups;

o worked with a private group in developing an electronic medical record (EMR) for practice groups at the HSC;

o presented a proposal to establish telemedicine and videoconferencing services for emergency diagnostic services and radiology consultation to a hospital in Beijing; and

o played a lead role in development of a Southern California Telemedicine Training and Evaluation Center.

The ABBC, headed by USC radiologist William Boswell, receives its main funding from grants and contracts and has positioned itself as a demonstration and evaluation center for telemedicine applications that serve both academic and business activities.

For example, as part of a four-year National Library of Medicine Telemedicine grant the ABBC featured five studies focusing on the development, implementation and evaluation of telemedicine in ophthalmology, emergency medicine and family practice.

The group has also developed projects in diagnosing and managing diabetic retinopathy at White Memorial Medical Center and telepsychiatry at California Hospital Medical Center.