Years ago when the earth wasn’t quite cool and a 300bps modem was the standard two friends of mine, Thom (RIP, Thom) and Vi Foulks were the first people I ever heard of making a living online.  There was no World Wide Web, there was no Google … heck Sergey and Larry were in elementary school … and side from a software guy I knew who had some programmers in Russia (yes it was the Soviet Union then) sending him code in return for him sending them Levi jeans I had never heard of a cent being made on line.

Vi had been a nurse and a practice manager for a busy doctor’s office and she knew the importance of medical transcription (the insurance companies require tons of documentation on a doctor’s every action … and for a pediatrician these have to be kept at least 20 years, until the child can no longer be used as the object of a suit by the parents … gotta love the American way, eh?

Anyway Vi also knew how hard it was for moms to work from home, so she and husband Thom set up a system of TRS-80 computers, 300 bps modems and standard phone lines into their home in Colorado Springs and put out the word that she could provide experienced, on-line transcriptions.  Whenever a candidate signed up, Vi and Thom would ship the lady a TRS-80 and a modem.  Every doctor Vi took on as a client used a Dictaphone (something else you could look up on Google and dropped off or messenger the "belts" to the Foulks’ home.  From there Vi either put the belt into a playback machine and had the transcriptionist list to it via phone line, or messenger the belts to the worker .. the end result was a verbatim transcript was uploaded, at 300 bps to Vi and paper copies were printed on a daisy wheel printer for the doctor’s files as well as an ‘archival" copy on 8 inch floppies … yes, there were 8 inch floppies.  Tom and Vi made a good living from this business and provided work for a lot of people … and he best part of this trip down memory lane?  The idea is still as new today as it was then.

On the front page of today’s’ Philippine Star is a story about the "new wave" of remote medical transcriptions in the Philippines being the second-highest salaried employees in the medical field.

In addition the article points out that while "contact centers’ (call centers) are growing at a better than 25% annual growth rate, medical trancriptionist positions are growing at an annual rate of 90% … yep, 90% growth rate through at least 2010.

If you know how to use a computer and go on line, if you know or can hook up with anyone with medical transcriptionist training and/or offer the training yourself … and you can’t make business out of that?  Then you deserve to be sent back to the 300bps modem days.  OBTW, it’s not only doctors who need this service.  lawyers, business executives … ever see the records of board meetings a corporation needs to keep these days … the list goes on and on.

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