Friday, May 23, 2008

TOKiBiz launches latest dot-com in health info website pool

By Christopher Calnan

Brookline-based TOKiBiz Inc. plans to launch next month a health-care website, an online business model that already has plenty of New England and national competitors. But local entrepreneurs say there is lots of room for more entrants as health-care dot-coms evolve by targeting more narrowly focused niches.

TOKiBiz’s infoMedMD.com will operate in one such niche — pre-appointment patient interviews. The website is designed to enable patients to answer 10 to 30 questions online before visiting a doctor’s office, thus saving time while providing the physician with important patient health information, President Tom O’Keefe said.

He said the potential number of online specialty areas in the health-care industry is so vast they could be filled by many more health-care entrepreneurs willing to take innovative approaches.

“There’s probably room for a number of (health-care) websites,” O’Keefe said. “The Internet is getting more advanced, and people’s requirements are getting more specific.”

Rocky Hill, Conn.-based ophthalmologist and computer programing hobbyist Joseph Bentivegna enlisted O’Keefe to develop infoMedMD.com after Bentivegna noticed websites with static — rather than interactive — patient interview features. The website would generate revenue from patient and doctor rather than advertising, Bentivegna said.

Local health-care website operators include Sermo Inc., Praxeon Inc. and Enhanced Medical Decisions Inc. Sermo generates revenue through subscriptions; Praxeon and Enhanced Medical are still considering revenue models.

In Cambridge, PatientsLikeMe Inc. has formed several online communities of patients with certain diseases, and WeGo Health Inc. has launched a website designed to provide patients with health-care information.

Earlier this week Google Inc. launched health news and search website Google Health, which integrates with Praxeon website Mydailyapple.com by using Google Health member-provided profiles on Mydailyapple.com. Mydailyapple.com, which launched in September 2007, is designed to provide users with e-mails and RSS feeds relating to specific health concerns such as diabetes, Praxeon chief strategy officer Dennis Underwood said.

The self-funded Praxeon launched its first website, Curbside.MD, in April 2007 to enable physicians and researchers to query each other using coding the company calls “semantic fingerprinting” to identify phrases and related content.

The development of health-care-related websites is still in its infancy and he’s expecting more specialized models in the future, Underwood said. “People are just getting their toes in,” he said.

Cambridge physician and tech entrepreneur Marlene Beggelman agreed. In late 2007, her company, Enhanced Medical Decisions, released a beta version of Doublecheckmd.com to help doctors and patients identify medication side effects. The website has grown faster than expected, attracting 20,000 users per month, she said.

Beggelman, like Underwood, expects such sites to become more specialized and plans to launch two more soon.

“There are a lot of lookalikes,” she said. “I think the products will get more refined.”