French Military Medical Aid Via Vizada BGAN

The French Ministry of Defense has selected Vizada to provide mobile satellite communications over the next three years (2008-2010). The company has put in place an Inmarsat BGAN-based solution for the French military health department (Service de Santé des Armées). BGAN terminals are deployed in remote bases worldwide, enabling military surgeons who are performing operations to transmit images via videoconferencing to medical staff based at a different site or country. The surgeons benefit from advice and guidance in real time from specialists for particularly critical or complicated surgical operations.




Two simultaneous IP BGAN links are put in place to make this possible. A 256 kbps streaming connection is used to perform videoconferencing and to relay images from the operating table to the medical staff in France. A background IP connection (up to 492 kbps) is used to send medical files, analysis reports, X-rays, photos and scans. This link is established with a computer connected to a BGAN terminal, medical equipment (scanner, X-ray machine) and a camera.




The BGAN IP traffic is relayed to Vizada’s land earth station and then via leased line to the hospital where the medical staff takes part in the surgical operation via videoconference. In addition, Vizada has developed its own in-house IP-based solutions to help the French MoD optimize a large fleet of satcoms terminals, including traffic management tools, IP filtering and protocol monitoring solutions.




Vizada provides Inmarsat, Iridium and Thuraya services for use on many different sites worldwide, including dedicated interconnection solutions to meet the MoD’s needs in terms of communications quality and security—France