Dot Com Medicine Essay, Research Paper

As we enter this technological age, there is no doubt that every single aspect of our lives have changed due to the influence of information technology in our daily lives from email to healthcare, convenience has become the name of the game saving us time, energy and in many cases money. Information Technology is impacting the way businesses function and the health care industry is no exception to this revolution. Medical practices are beginning to experience how this new vehicle for exchanging information can benefit them. Emerging in all of this is an onslaught of online pharmacies and medical based websites.

“Health care on the Internet has diversified and grown exponentially in the past two or three years” (Ross 56). As health care on the Internet continues to evolve from fairly static first generation information sites toward third generation interactive health management programs online, courts, regulators and private accrediting entities are struggling to apply existing law to a new medium and to develop new law when needed. “However, despite the Internet’s efficiency as a communication medium, which lends itself to some health care transactions, most health care transactions on the Internet involve information as a commodity rather than a service”. (Branscum, Check, and Kalb 101)

The Internet has become a vehicle for E-commerce innovators to conducting an array of transactions which involve electronic data interchanges (EDI), including enrolling for health insurance, finding advise about medical conditions, paying health insurance claims, or purchasing prescription drugs. Companies like: Drugstore.com, PlanteRX, WebMD, Mayo.edu, Dr.Koop.com, and CVS.com (all of these are all examples of either first or second generation health care uses of the internet) have emerged from out of now where to become booming businesses. While third generation health sites like the Medtronic.com (Medtronic joined forces with corporate giants Microsoft and IBM) a site devoted to online management of cardiovascular disease.

Growth of health care on the Internet and the application of legal controls to it are largely driven by the commodity nature of the health care activities involved to date. Missing from the phenomenon thus far and critical to its future success is the medical profession. Clearly, much of the laying on of hands will remain an intimate face-to-face encounter between doctor and patient. Whether physicians can be convinced that third generation health management initiatives on the Internet can add real value to the practice of medicine remains to be seen.

Branscum, Deborah, Ericka Check and Claudia Kalb. “Doctors Go Dot.Com.” Newsweek.

17 August 1999: 101

Ross, Sid. “Medical and Healthcare sits Demonstrate Healthy Traffic Flow.” Brandweek.

9 October 2000: 56