The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), which helps policy makers and researchers shape the future of the Ontario health care system, is the latest organization to join ORION.

"ICES has built its reputation by developing a capacity to perform advanced analysis to measure the performance of Ontario's healthcare system and better understand the shifting needs of Ontarians. The expansion of our program across the province will benefit Ontario's health system by enhancing access to new health data sets and create the largest collaboration of researchers of its kind worldwide," says David Henry, CEO at ICES.

An independent, non-profit organization, ICES plays a key role in providing scientific insights to help policymakers, managers, planners, practitioners and other researchers shape the future direction of the Ontario health care system. Highly regarded in Canada and abroad, its unbiased, evidence-based knowledge and recommendations - profiled in atlases, investigative reports, and peer-reviewed journals - are used to guide decision-making and inform changes in health care delivery.

"It is encouraging to see institutions like ICES recognize the value of the special capabilities of the ORION network to advance and support their own goals and priorities," says David Koa, Senior Director, Partnerships and Strategic Alliances at ORION.

Located in Toronto, ICES is also the first member to use ORION's Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), which delivers a multipoint-to-multipoint Ethernet service. VPLS allows multiple Ethernet LANs from different sites to be connected together across the ORION network, thereby emulating a single Ethernet LAN segment for that member.

ICES will connect three satellite sites - in Toronto, Ottawa and Kingston - and two main database sites to this private network with an expansion plan that includes more sites in the future.

Read the news release.