“We’re ready to move on a variety of forward-thinking initiatives that are the result of three years of work,” said Professor Lesley Barclay, head of the Northern Rivers University Department of Rural Health.

“They won’t necessarily all get done as well as we’d like, but it’s visionary thinking, and the national broadband network is part of that.

“To go backwards with this would mean that rural and remote populations will continue to suffer unreasonably. This is one aspect of forward thinking that might make a difference.”

Prof. Barclay, an internationally known maternal child health researcher who lives in Bangalow, in north-eastern NSW, said an NBN could transform rural medicine in several important ways.

Instead of patients having to travel to other centres to visit specialists, with all the travel and accommodation costs this entails, country GPs could consult directly with specialists over a broadband link.

In Prof. Barclay’s field of expertise, training of the health workforce, rural training centres could hook up with seminars or training resources anywhere in the world.

And the NBN could significantly lessen the professional isolation of practitioners - doctors and nurses - who choose to work in rural areas, but who feel themselves getting out of touch with the latest thinking.

“I think it’s going to intensify the quality of care that people can get in country areas,” Prof. Barclay said.

Last weekend, she added, she gave up downloading medical documents over the wireless link from her home in Bangalow because the service was so slow.