This Sexual Assault "TeleNursing Center" will use Telemedicine to provide 24/7 real time access to expert MA SANE providers for the care of adult and adolescent sexual assault patients.

The purpose of this award is to allow the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) to provide live access to Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs), or other expert medical forensic examiners, for four pilot sites and a process evaluation of the project that will be supported through this cooperative agreement.
The ultimate goal of this project is to create a national center that serves all jurisdictions on a fee-for-service basis. The national telemedicine center is to provide 24-hour live access, using cutting edge audiovisual technology, to expert medical forensic examiners to walk a health care provider through a sexual assault forensic medical examination. The four pilot sites will use the services of the telemedicine center.
The four pilot sites will include rural, tribal, military, urban/suburban without a current medical forensic program, and/or correctional settings. One of these four pilot sites will be a Department of the Navy (DON) site which will be supported through an Interagency Agreement between the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and DON.
Through this initiative with MDPH, OVC, and support from the National Institute of Justice, a national telemedicine center will be developed to administer these services to four pilot sites. ca/ncf