Company brings medicine cabinet to the Web
Site wants to be one-stop health care shop
Last October, Hospital Payment & Information Management told readers about a service that offered a secure site for consumers to keep their medical records on the Web. Now another company is offering a medical history registry service but is adding medical resources, products, and physician information to the site, as well.
"We want to be the one-stop shop on the Internet for all of a consumer’s health care needs," says Stanley Stern, chief operating officer for Integrated Medical Technologies (IMT) in Lawrence, NY. IMT’s Medical Edge Web site (http://www.medicaledge.com) offers medical information resources, an on-line medical history registry, an on-line pharmacy resource, a planned national physician referral system and inquiry service, and a medical bookstore. Some of the services are in operation now; while others are planned to be operational soon.
The Web site will bring the best in medical resources, products and services to consumers and health care professionals who need them most, says Murray Friedman, DDS, chief executive officer of IMT. Friedman co-founded IMT with David Steiner, MD, now president of the company. "The Medical Edge represents a focus of all these energies in one [site]."
Health care professionals can use this site to encourage patients to take better care of themselves and also to keep up with what information is available to patients, Stern says.
What it offers
The Medical Edge Web site officially launched in November. Services available at the site include the following:
- Medical registry.
Consumers who want more control over their medical records and want them available in emergency situations can place them in their entirety on the Medical Edge Web site. All types of patient information can be included in the registry, such as X-ray images, and all data transmission is encrypted for security.
Once the account is set up, the consumer’s medical history can be accessed via the Internet or through a fax service. (To see a sample registry, see box, p. 37.)
The on-line registry account also is linked to a unique identification number. The registry user is provided with a personalized bracelet that contains his or her identification number and a toll-free number to call for fax-back retrieval of medical information.
Medical Edge charges for the registry service, account setup, maintenance, and updates. The setup fee for on-line entries, however, has been waived for a limited time, and on-line updates carry no charge.
- The drug stop.
IMT has an affiliation with a mail-order pharmacy, allowing consumers to order generic or brand name drugs through the Web site for home delivery.
The site offers the most common prescription drugs, Stern says. Consumers can go onto the site, which is organized by drug category, and choose a prescription drug. The site gives them a choice of 30- and 90-day quantities. For this reason, the primary marketplace for the pharmacy is for maintenance drugs, Stern says. IMT has chosen not to fill prescriptions for controlled substances or those in liquid form since the drugs are mailed.
Consumers can pay with a credit card. The site then provides them with toll-free numbers for either faxing their prescriptions or having the physician call them in to the pharmacy. The drugs are generally shipped through two-day service via United Parcel Service.
In addition, the Web sites provide links to pharmaceutical-related sites on the Internet.
- Medical supplies.
Through a network of suppliers, Medical Edge offers almost any medical or surgical supply. As with the pharmacy services, orders are taken over the Internet and products are shipped to the consumer’s home.
Other services that are or will be operational soon on the Medical Edge Web site include:
- Select doc.
This physician referral service has two parts, Stern says. The standard service is a link to the general site to the Chicago-based American Medical Association’s physician database.
The Medical Edge also offers a premier service, which will be a more select subset of physicians. For a fee, physicians will be able to provide more in-depth information about themselves to the consumer.
For example, a consumer might select a subset of doctors based on their specialty. Then each of those doctors might have a profile that includes information such as languages spoken, insurance plans accepted, affiliated hospitals, and their philosophy of medicine. The profiles also include hours of service, handicapped access, on-site services, and Web addresses, if they have a site. "This is information that a consumer would like to know but generally is not told without a lot of questioning," Stern says.
- Answer doc.
Answer doc allows consumers to ask medical information questions to board-certified physicians. Consumers can contact the physicians by telephone or through an e-mail message. The e-mail response time is about 48 to 72 hours.
These physicians will not offer a second opinion or give medical advice, Stern says. "Answer doc will allow consumers to get the answers to questions that are bothering them when they can’t reach their doctor or when they might be too embarrassed to ask their doctor or they feel their doctor won’t take the time to talk with them." The proposed fees for the service are $29 for e-mail and $39 for a phone conversation.
- Medical reference.
This service provides medical information updated by medical professionals and information technologists. The resources in this section include Medline, a database of published medical literature. "We placed Medline on the site primarily for health care professionals," Stern says. This section also includes links to other medical sites and a medical dictionary.
- Medical news.
This service checks industry news leaders for medical news and includes medical news links.
- Profiles in medicine.
This service features various physicians and scientists who have made a substantial contribution to the world of medicine.
- Support networks.
This service provides contact information and links to support groups.
- Medical bookstore.
The bookstore is offered in affiliation with Barnes and Noble in New York, one of the world’s largest bookstore chains.
- Health quiz.
Consumers can take a health quiz, offered in three different levels of expertise.
Just the beginning
IMT will be adding more services to Medical Edge in the future, Stern says. "We have a list of projects in various stages of development that is quite extensive."
IMT also hopes to soon offer some of the services, such as the medical history registry and the mail-order pharmacy, to consumers who aren’t comfortable using the Internet. "Consumers will soon be able to sign up for the registry through a manual form and be able to order from the pharmacy through fulfillment centers."
Currently, however, everything is offered through the Medical Edge site. With this site, IMT wants to give users a sense of health care community, Stern says. "Our intent is to provide consumers with the ammunition they need to be an educated consumer in the health care field."
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