In the 1990's the technology was deemed to be "ahead of its time" with doctors, lawyers, regulators and insurance companies all being reluctant to take a leadership role. As the Internet improved in speed and security, and as health care costs have continued to rise, there has recently been a complete paradigm shift in favor of online health care technologies.

Telemedicine Initiative -  The concept was based on the simple premise that patients should be able to receive quality health services on-demand. If the patient and and the doctor each had an Internet connection, enough credible information should be capable of being transferred between them to establish a baseline diagnosis. In many cases, health related problems could be solved almost instantly, on a 24/7 basis, with zero travel expenses and with almost no overhead.

The Rural Telemedicine Cooperative, Inc. (RTC) was formed to advocate the use of this and other technologies to solve rural health issues. Our organization took an exclusive, extended lease on the patents and began the long process of educating people on the merits of online health care.

In the last few years, the cost of providing online services has dropped to the point that it is now possible to have inexpensive, yet high quality video and wireless vital-signs collection equipment connected to home computers. Insurers are also under intense pressure to reduce costs and laws are being passed to make it easier for doctors to offer their services online.  Accordingly, the insurance companies have now become the retailers of E-Visits. They market the E-Visit services to patients along with regular insurance coverage. They qualify the doctors and collect fees and deductibles for the E-Visits provided. The system is controlled entirely by the insurance company via their web pages and servers. Everybody wins.  Finally, quality health care services are only as far away as the closest Internet connection.

In the coming few years, E-Visits will be to health care what Online Banking has been to the financial industry. To be competitive, every bank must now have Online Banking. The same evolution is now taking place in health care.

To help further our goal of educating our constituents in the use of online technologies, we are now consulting for insurance companies and health care providers nationwide. Our Voluntary Licensing Program expired on September 15, 2010, but we are still advocates of E-Visit technology and in close communication with the owners of the patents.

ViPER Transfer Network - With more than 40 software companies developing EHRs, 6,000 US hospitals and over 80% of the 950,000 private practice US physicians still using paper records, there is a need for a service to allow them to exchange paper and/or electronic health records (EHRs) securely, efficiently and cost effectively regardless of their software platform or lack thereof. RTC is developing the ViPER Transfer network. This 3rd party transfer network will allow such secure exchanges. RTC's ViPER (virtual, private electronic record) Transfer Network will significantly reduce medical errors, service duplications, IT costs and HIPAA liability for all participating health care providers. It will also allow for comfortable blend of open-source data exchanges between disparate and often proprietary record keeping systems.

We welcome the support of the academic community, health care providers, medical doctors, nurses, insurers and legal professionals as we build a network to share information and technology.