Customers' views differ on med web site potential
It's clear that the internet is booming in Poland, with one web portal after another being announced. It's already a crowded information highway in Gore-speak, at least in some areas such as auto sales, with the latest joint venture involving the auto-industry guru Samar.
But are the right people getting access to the web?
Take medical doctors. Westerners who are here as consultants or partners or short-time advisers generally give Polish physicians high marks for their education, skills and drive to learn. They despair about the organization of medicine here, and of the resulting low pay for these highly skilled doctors. Aside from issues of corruption in medicine, Westerners have worried about how to get cutting-edge information to doctors when their income precludes their buying the magazines and books that convey that information.
The internet could be a solution to that if the doctors are wired to a computer system.
And that's where the data differs.
Two Polish companies have taken opposite stands recently based on their reading of whether there are enough doctors with internet access to support web ventures that would offer them services and information.
Jonathon B. Mills and his father Richard Mills have been publishing Western medical publications here, in Polish and with Polish content added to translated stories from the West, since early in the transition.
Their goal was to give the most pertinent medical information to general practitioners, and to build up their capabilities at a time when the system still focused on specialists. (The healthcare reform has switched that emphasis, causing much outcry among average Poles.)
By this summer, they had expanded from the original Medycyna po Dyplomie to magazines for pediatricians, gynecologists and veterinarians.
And early this month, the Mills sold their company KMWM and its operations in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to one of the leading German trade publishers, the Suddeutsche Verlag Professional Publishing Group.
The German publisher is the parent of one of Germany's top daily newspapers, Suddeutsche Zeitung, but also puts out Medical Tribune International. Its president, Bernhard von Minckwitz, said they were considering the option of producing Medical Tribune in Poland but, even without that, the acquisition of KMWM will make them a leading medical publisher in Central Europe and Germany.
Early this year, said Jonathon Mills, KMWM was looking hard at expanding its Medycyna po Dyplomie web site. Then they got a look at the number of doctors who actually had access to the internet gleaned from a telephone survey last winter of 2,108 family doctors and internists conducted by BusinessPoint of Warsaw.
The doctors gave high marks to Medycyna po Dyplomie it was read by 40% of these doctors and that was welcome feedback for the Mills. But they were shocked at answers to another question, on how the doctors got information about medical products and drugs.
"Of the 2,108 doctors, only 20 said the internet" was their primary source for finding out that data, Mills said, well behind five other sources: medical representatives, the medical press, direct mail, symposiums and other doctors.
"We were about to put a large investment into our web site when we saw these results," Mills said.
Still skeptical, the father and son team ordered up four focus groups with 38 doctors. "Only two used the internet and only one of them used it professionally," he said.
Some said there was a computer in the hospital in the director's office but not accessible to them.
Mills noted that in addition to the Medycyna medical web site, there are three others and he's been contacted by three more groups planning to launch similar sites.
"I don't get it, considering that the United States is struggling with just a couple of sites," he said. "There were more but they either merged or failed or both."
One newcomer to the Polish medical web site scene will be a site launched by Enterprise Investors and Medical Data Management if their joint venture goes forward from the summertime handshake agreement.
Clearly, they think there are enough doctors online to make it worth their while.
"The portal will be targeted at physicians and medical professors," said Enterprise's Robert Manz, adding that the site will provide both content and services in a more comprehensive package than what others offer. MDM has a database "with 150,000 physicians and professors in Poland," he said, and it also has operations in other Central and Eastern European countries as well as Russia and Ukraine.
"We have some information that shows that about 35% of doctors use the internet today and that up to 70% of those have access to computers, at home or at work. We think the foundation is quite promising," Manz said.
"You find that most surveys show internet usage is by students and tech folks and if you boil down this information, it seems very skewed. But medical doctors could be one of the heavyweights in that skewing," Manz said. "So I think it's an interesting sector, and very unique. You can target an offer that is really tailored to them."
Nevertheless, computer access remains a concern. So what to do about it? Would the Enterprise-MDM duo offer low-cost computers or internet access as part of their come-ons?
"We're looking at that," Manz said. "We'd like to include a technology and an internet-access offer." Stay tuned for more details.
Enterprise sees the medical web site as building on strengths it already has in both the medical/pharmaceutical and IT sectors. Michal Rusiecki, an Enterprise vice president, has been focusing on health care, including the recent $10 million investment in Medycyna Rodzinna, which they aim to expand into a chain of family clinics. They still have stakes in Polfa Kutno and Jelfa and in two drug distribution companies, Pharmag and PGF.
Manz and Zygmunt Grajkowski are the fund's IT specialists.
"We've invested quite a lot about $30 million in the past two years," Manz said, ranging from software development and distribution to WAP to hardware maintenance.
