Dr. David Walmer uses the new network communications kit provided by Duke for the Haitian clinic.

Durham, NC - Duke is putting the latest networking technology to work to help earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Using two advanced "network-in-a-box" toolkits provided by the Office of Information Technology, health-care workers at clinics in Port-au-Prince and Leogane, Haiti, can phone from one clinic to another, call medical experts at Duke, and connect to Duke databases and libraries as if they were on the Durham campus.

The clinics are run by Family Health Ministries, a Duke-affiliated nonprofit that has provided health services in Haiti for more than a decade.

"In addition to communication between facilities and back to the States, this allows us to upload data to servers at Duke, so the data is protected in case something bad happens, and do Medline searches as if our computers are part of the Duke system," said FHM founder Dr. David Walmer, an affiliate with the Duke Global Health Institute and chief of reproductive endocrinology at Duke University Medical Center

The Jan. 12 earthquake demolished much of the country's communications infrastructure.

"It's never going to be the same as it was before," Walmer said. "The town as we knew it has been destroyed, and 80 percent of what's left has to be leveled and replaced. But in the midst of that, part of the healing process in the community comes from having as much of a sense of normality as you can while you're digging out."

The Leogane clinic is set to reopen to patients this week.

Bob Johnson, OIT's senior director of communication infrastructure, said the kits were designed for emergency relief situations.

Small enough to fit in an airplane's overhead bin, each portable toolkit contains a router and other equipment necessary to quickly establish local wired, wireless and voice over IP (VoIP) networks, including wireless phones that extend mobile data and voice coverage to as many as 40 field workers.

"They're easy enough to use that lay people in the field can set them up: You just plug the green into the green and the red into the red, and the thing phones home and sets itself up," Johnson said.

OIT has used the Cisco technology as part of its efforts to build an IT infrastructure that supports research and learning in locations around the world.