Telemedicine Initiative - Within the USA, Telemedicine (sometimes called "Telehealth") is already widely used in radiology and in numerous other specialty fields on a doctor-to-doctor and/or institutional basis. To name just a few, the states of Alaska and Hawaii have fully functioning and successful telemedicine programs to allow doctors to visit patients in remote towns and islands. The state of Texas has a successful Telemedicine program for its correctional system - allowing one central doctor to visit any inmate in any prison within the system. In most cases, the cost savings are substantial. With consider knowledge of HIT and evolving telemedicine technologies, RTC offers its telemedicine IP and telemedicine consulting services to its constituents on a non-profit basis.

We have licensed some technology in this area to share with our constituents. Specifically, we have obtained the patent rights to a retail system that will allow a doctor to visit patients in Skilled Nursing Facilities (nursing homes), patient's in rural areas and on Indian reservations. At the same time they can use the technology to visit a retail pharmacy or even receive health care in their homes via the Internet. Our blueprint for developing the medical model will be freely shared with the non-profit community.  We will fund our research and service program by selling commercial-use patent licenses for the use of this technology outside our areas of interest.

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 healthcare providers. It will also allow for comfortable blend of open-source data exchanges between disparate and often proprietary record keeping systems.

Personal Health Record - We are developing the first secure, fully customizable personal health record (PHR) database that is managed entirely by the patient and is available on-demand to patient-selected healthcare providers. Our system will allow the patient to enter the health data they choose, yet still interface with evolving regional health information networks (RHIOs) and insurance company PHRs on a fully HIPAA compliant basis. The PHR will interface with the ViPER transfer network.

In order to assist with our mission, a significant fund raising and grant writing effort is being undertaken. These grants will usually be applied to a specific location with an existing rural healthcare problem and may be applied for in conjunction with other organizations.

We welcome the support of the academic community, healthcare providers, medical doctors, nurses and legal professionals as we build a network to share information and technology. We also welcome grant writers, government agencies and philanthropists who can assist with the procurement of development funding.

We will soon have a mailing list and a "services" section where available services will be shared.

Please feel free to contact us here:
Rural Telemedicine Cooperative, Inc.
PO Box 948
Lexington, SC 29071
Tel: 803-356-0032
Fax: 803-753-0174
email: Support@TeleMD.org